The Wolfman

Directed by Joe Johnson
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Hugo Weaving

Plot
Lawrence Talbot, a haunted nobleman, is lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Reunited with his estranged father, Talbot sets out to find his brother... and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself. Talbot's childhood ended the night his mother died. After he left the sleepy Victorian hamlet of Blackmoor, he spent decades recovering and trying to forget. But when his brother's fiancée, Gwen Conliffe, tracks him down to help find her missing love, Talbot returns home to join the search.

Review
I love films that touch on the supernatural or alternative - I love vampire and werewolf stories, no matter how cheesy they are.  And perhaps that was the reason this film didn't really gel with me - it took itself too seriously and didn't pull it off.  If you are going to the deal 'seriously' with the werewolf, it had better be damn fine.

The sets are damn fine, but the acting not so much.  Anthony Hopkins, as the overbearing father Sir John Talbot, has fallen a long way since I loved him in Proof.  Since then I feel that most of his acting has been hammy and a touch towards overacting.  In The Wolfman he doesn't do much past look supercilious.  Benicio del Toro as our hero Lawrence Talbot who I haven't seen in a movie for ages struggled a bit with his haircut.  Who on earth would give their good-looking hero a hair cut like that <shudders>. I couldn't make it past his haircut so I can't remember his acting.  But the transformation CGI was great, as you would expect from a director who was the Visual Effects Director for the Star Wars films (the original three not the great pretenders). 

There was a plot line about a missing brother, Emily Blunt's fiance, but throughout the film it was very bare, pushed along by some truly gory gore.  But all the flying limbs and blood couldn't distract from a movie that promised a lot in the trailer and delivered something more along the lines of a sheep in wolf's clothing rather than a lycanthrope.