Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

Much to my surprise, I very much liked Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. Why the surprise? Well, I avoided Wanted because it looked annoying. I watched Nightwatch and Daywatch, both of which were, as Manola Dargis of the NY Times, said, almost incomprehensible. But this movie is fairly straightforward, action packed and blessed with the charisma of the lead, Benjamin Walker, his mentor, Dominic Cooper and his right-hand man, Anthony Mackie. And, of course,Rufus Sewell as the lead bad guy. Poor Rufus-blessed with a leading man's good looks, he seems almost destined to always play the vampire/monster/all-around bad guy. He had a break from it when he played the detective in Zen for the BBC, but unfortunately it got cancelled, so now he's back to playing the bad guy. I certainly  hope he can get away from typecasting-he's too good an actor to get stuck in those sorts of parts. Everyone else is quite good too. Benjamin Walker does a good job of capturing Lincoln's pain when his sideline in vampire hunting brings pain to family. Dominc Cooper is a lot fun as a his mentor-almost on the verge of over acting but never quite there. And I'd like to give props to Anthony Mackie. I feel about him sort of like a feel about Kathy Bates-every time I see him, I realize how much he perks things up and how happy I am to see him. It's a bit of a thankless part, as Lincoln's best friend, and he invests it with everything he has. I would LOVE to see him in a Marvel superhero movie, reunited with Jeremy Renner. Can't he play the Black Panther? Luke Cage? Someone cool that will use all of abilities? He's too good to waste-the guy is a great actor. And I would also like to say how amusing I found it that the vampires were slave owners in the South. I'll ignore the fact they if they kept killing them, they couldn't use them to work in the fields to get the cotton that the South needed to survive-maybe the vampire were rich already didn't need the cotton and it was all a pretest for owning slaves-it doesn't pay to over think it when a movie is based an Abraham Lincoln as a vampire hunter. But the end was great-I give much credit to Walker for reciting the Gettysburg Address, as iconic a speech as it gets in this country, and giving it all he had. I will say this though, that speech did make me long for the new Lincoln movie coming out in the fall, with Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and and Jared Harris as Grant. I would have loved to see Grant in this movie, asking Lincoln what the hell  was going on and why couldn't those damned Rebs be killed, but it was not to be.