Dracula Untold [Blu-ray] [2014]

Enjoy

Really enjoyed this. It is subtitled too. Very pleased to have it on Blu-ray.

Love this film. One of my favourites.

An interesting take on the Dracula story. Dracula is the good guy for once and we find ourselves rooting for him throughout the film.Taken by the Turks as a child, and given up by his father in return for peace, a young Vlad is trained to become a ruthless fighting machine. He earns a terrifying reputation on behalf of the Turks for impaling thousands of their enemies on long stakes hammered into the ground; Vlad the Impaler. When he is released to go back to his own people in Transalvania, he becomes their prince and peace reigns, at least for a while. But the Sultan returns and requests 100 of the boys from his kingdom to be taken captive and trained as warriors. When Prince Vlad begs him to rethink his request, the sultan twists the knife by also demanding Vlad's own son is taken too. Without an army of his own, Vlad seeks out supernatural powers of darkness by revisiting a cave where we previously see him encountering an evil and repulsive looking vampire played by Charles Dance. He makes a pact with him that in return for his powers for a period of 3 days. He will return to his mortal being if he can resist the hunger for blood during those 3 days. But if he fails, and he drinks the blood of a human, he will release the trapped evil vampire, to wreak his revenge in the world. And in addition, Vlad will be condemned for eternity as one of the undead.It's an action packed, quality film which is not unlike the Lord of the Rings in its tone. So I would probably say it fits more into the fantasy genre than horror, but that is just my opinion. It gets four stars, because it is an original approach to the vampire legend, and the affects are sophisticated and seamless.

Good film and enjoyed it

Good value

Perfect

Various reviews have considered the plot, direction and editing (pacing etc) but there is something interesting about the story that also resonates with the recent film Maleficent.Maleficent duly reformed as her actions are revenge on a monarch for crimes against herself and people rather than simply her own malevolence. It could be that simple tales of good and evil are old hat and characters are now to have complex motivations and rationals for their behaviour, with moral perspectives rather than moral absolutes.Can't help drawing the comparison with Ridley Scott's 'Kingdom of heaven' of the crusades of Christian monarchies vs Saracen(Muslims), also the US the 'war on terror' where presumably one must become a monster (US) to defeat evil (militant Islam). A topic broached in the Star Trek film 'Into darkness'.The film, not unlike Francis Ford Copula's 'Dracula' seems to redefine Dracula as a fallen romantic anti-hero. But if you read the original 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker he was far from this. Dracula is the personification of evil (in the biblical sense). There is no limit to his depravity. I guess the original story would have been shocking to Victorian sensibilities. His evil is established early on by feeding a baby to the vampiric 'sisters' and then setting wolves on the mother of the baby when she visits his castle to beg for her child. Not much room for character reformation I think. Even after Lucy Westernra is turned by Dracula she is hardly much better, with paedophilic zeal, predates on children for her blood meal.It's thought that Bram Stoker was referring to what was considered the parasitic European aristocracy of the late 19th century. Perhaps the retelling is to described a more complex perspective on behaviour. But if the European aristocracy are viewed as having a contemporary analogue, the business and financial elite, are we expected to view their vampiric sucking in a more sympathetic light?