November 17, 2007
30 days of night
Josh Hartnett revisits familiar territory in what we assumed must be the sequel to 40 Days and 40 Nights ("I am big. It's the titles that got small"). And it sort of is: our hero has to go a month with blue balls, trying not to get drained by a bunch of bloodsucking lovelies while he gets his head right.
The title also turns out to describe what should be a perfectly interesting conceit for a vampire film: in the Arctic Circle, one of the proven anti-vampire strategies is effectively off the table for a month. One could imagine an alternate approach called Land Without Garlic.
Alas, hoping for any narrative device to unfold interestingly in this film would require, as a precondition, the tiniest sliver of logical sense in the plot. No dice. Well, citizens who attend Hollywood cinema for the plot are sort of fucked anyway; it's like going to the club for the time signatures. The pleasures are elsewhere, and more social.
In this case, the main delight is Danny Huston in the Shannyn Sossamon role. Though too much of a set piece, it's entirely thrilling when he rebuts the supernatural tastes of humans with three slow words. "God?" he says in a curdling voice, pivoting his head unnaturally to take in a panorama of the desolated, frozen town, unable to wrap his serrated throat around Anglo phonemes or concepts. "No god."
At another juncture he does his hair up into a little pompadour. With blood. Seriously, let's see Shannyn Sossamon do that.
Posted by jane at November 17, 2007 08:27 AM | TrackBack