DaybreakersWhen three of Hollywood’s most prolific, overrated payday actors
Ethan Hawke,
Willem Dafoe and
Sam Neill first sat down to rehearse Daybreakers – I’ll bet neither one could look the other in the eye.
Did they believe in the script? Not a chance. Did they believe in the characters? I doubt it, they’re vampires. But these aren’t unbelievable in the sense that they’re mythical beings, they’re unbelievable in the sense that once you’ve dispensed all disbelief that vampires aren’t real – you’re left with puff-pastry vehicles for dialogue as convincing as
Gerry McCann... oh come on, he did it.
These characters aren’t even one-dimensional, they have nothing. They’re singular points. They’re fleshy exposition for a plot that’s less intriguing than the black bits of dirt accumulated under your toenails – which at least smell interesting.
This film is awful. It makes as much sense as a dog’s dream about a vampire film. The female lead is so ugly, you feel offended on behalf of humans.
The one positive thing about Daybreakers – it’s very short, it doesn’t feel it, but you know somewhere there’s another 90 minutes of celluloid in an editors bin, taking up space. It’s been butchered to such an extent; they seem to have ruptured the very essence of time and space. In one scene, you’re witness to the complete downfall of society, an almost Utopian future cascades into utter bloody chaos as a broken society rips itself apart from the inside out. Meanwhile, Ethan Hawke drives from a tree to a farm. There’s no context or tension and each scene turns into a crescendo you didn’t know or care was around the corner.
It’s made me re-evaluate my own perception of time. How do I know that during the 30 minutes it takes me to write this, there aren’t other world events developing and resolving at a frightening canter. Perhaps
Dean Gaffney has run for mayor – bear with me – won the election and introduced a bylaw decreeing that anyone better looking than him isn’t allowed outside their homes during daylight hours – so he can have the city to himself.
And one day, as Gaffney races around the M25 anti-clockwise at 180 miles an hour, firing a Smith & Wesson revolver out the window at the blurry cows – he crashes into a billboard of himself, breaking his own neck and swallowing his own face. Dean is then forced to spend the next 25 years in crippled isolation, with nothing for company but books. Boring! He reluctantly studies art, philosophy, literature and history – he learns about ancient civilisations and begins writing poetry. For the first time, Dean loves. He sees the beauty in the world. He sees the potential. He looks back on his time as mayor with deep and profound regret. The power, the opportunities… the waste… is it too late? Could Dean possibly run for mayor again and use the power for good? To create a better world? With no face and no legs?
No. He loses the election to
Romeo Beckham.
Dean can no longer live in a cannibalising, turkey twizzling society. So he hangs himself. Unfortunately for no-faced Dean, his neck is already broken, and he’s left swaying and alone for two weeks before dying of starvation. Meanwhile, I’m still here finishing this review, 28 minutes after I started it. Sure it was a tangent, but it gets my point across. The film doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s bongo. It’s awful. 2/10.
