Insanely fun vampire flick

When Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter co-star Anthony Mackie (Hurt Locker, 8 Mile) first read the script of the film based on the best-selling novel of the same title by Seth Grahame-Smith, the words “absurd” and “weird” did cross his mind. After all, how would you transform America’s most beloved president into a Batman-like superhero and convince everyone to suspend disbelief as he finishes those bloodthirsty vampires bent to take over the nation during the American Civil War?

But when Mackie saw the end result, he was overwhelmed by feelings of relief and awe.

That’s exactly what we went through, from the time we got an invite for the New York press preview of director-producer Timur Bekmambetov’s action-horror epic, until end credits rolled up the screen.

Aside from the fact that the undead in the film are much more terrifying, there’s something fresh about the movie that makes it stand out from the rest of the vampire (and even zombie) flicks.

For one, Bekmambetov (director of Wanted, Nightwatch and Daywatch) and his co-producer Tim Burton (Batman, Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland) cleverly integrated fiction with historical facts which could be considered groundbreaking in horror filmmaking, to say the least.

This is something that may not sit well with some historians. But at least, the scholars at the Lincoln Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois enjoyed both the movie and the book, according to Grahame-Smith.

The film is never blasphemous to the 16th president of the United States. Anyone familiar with Abe Lincoln’s story would know that the movie is just a fantasy. In fact, we became an instant Lincoln fan as the movie renewed our interest to revisit (with Google’s help) the historical events and drama leading to Gettysburg Address and know more about the man who freed all Americans when he ended slavery.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is peppered with stylish and dazzling fight scenes and stunts — so good you wouldn’t want to miss a single frame. Think of Kill Bill or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 3D, then replace the sword with axe, and you’ll get the idea how the action scenes are meticulously choreographed and presented.

Walker with Mary Elizabeth Winstead in a scene from the movie.

“While you watch it, you’re so pleasantly surprised by the big action sequences. But the truth is they’re painful to film,” reveals actor Dominic Cooper (Captain America and My Week With Marilyn), who plays Henry, mentor to the axe-wielding Lincoln.

“We worked quite hard,” Cooper adds, referring to the rigorous training the actors had to endure. “The story is very visual and we had to learn many sequences and learn certain moves and then they are put together; it’s not like a one-time choreographed thing.”

Mackie, who plays Lincoln’s black childhood friend Will, says Bekmambetov is gifted with the ability to execute a preposterous scene and actually pulls it off.

“There were times when Tim (Bekmambetov) would say, ‘Okay we’re gonna do this,’” Mackie relates, “and everyone, literally everyone on the crew, was like, ‘How the f___ are we gonna do that?’ And he made it work. I felt like an idiot in doing the scenes, but when I watch the movie now I’m like, ‘Wow, it actually worked!’”

Bekmambetov, who is Russian, reveals that the daring action scenes originated in Kazakhstan, home to fight choreographer Igor Tsay (a Korean) and his Acting School of Fighting Kun-Do.

The actors, especially lead star Benjamin Walker, were trained in the weeks leading up to production by famous fight coordinators Mic Rodgers (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wanted and The Fast and the Furious) and Don Lee (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides).

Walker as Lincoln delivers a fine job. Although the irresistibly handsome actor resembles a young Liam Neeson, he fits to a T as Lincoln. (Trivia: Lincoln was 6’4” in height; Walker is 6’3”.)

He credits Bekmambetov, whom he calls a visionary, for making everything possible.

“He’s like a really imaginative six-year-old,” Walker says of his director, “He’s very professional, but at the same time his imagination just runs wild you’ll never know what you’re gonna do on a given day. And I really enjoyed that.”

 This is the 30-year-old Juilliard-trained actor’s biggest break in Hollywood after appearing in films like Flags of our Fathers and Kinsey, and a host of Broadway projects including the musical Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson in the lead role as the seventh US president.

 Walker bagged the Lincoln vampire hunter role after the producers (Bekmambetov, Tim Burton and Jim Lemley) gave him a screen test and had him don prosthetics that aged him to 55, and deliver the Gettysburg Address (“Four score and seven years ago...”).

“My reaction was, ‘Oh my God, it’s Abraham Lincoln delivering the most renowned speech in history,” recalls Lemley, adding that Walker had to drop 30 pounds to achieve the late president’s leanness, and underwent hundreds of hours of weapons training to turn him into the ultimate vampire hunter.

Walker, when asked if he hopes the movie would turn him into a Hollywood A-Lister, simply replies, “No, I just need to keep my health insurance.” (Another trivia: Walker is married to Mamie Gummer, eldest daughter of three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep.)

The supporting characters — from the frightening Rufus Sewell, who plays the vampire chief Adam; to Marton Csokas, who is Jack Barts, the bloodsucker who bit Lincoln’s mom that evoked Lincoln’s rage against the undead — have equal share of shining moments. Everyone of them, surprisingly, turns out to be vital in the film’s wholeness.

There are two unforgettable swashbuckling scenes, both visual treats combining live action and computer graphics. One is where the iconic president battles the vampires atop and across the backs of a thousand stampeding horses (we swear to God, we wished to rewind that scene at the press screening to relish it one more time). The other is the equally-stunning, gravity-defying encounter among the vampires and their slayers in and on top of a train carrying tons of silver weapons and heading to the American Civil War‘s defining battle in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. How the train scene ends will give you goose bumps.

The film has lots of heart, too, mostly provided by the exquisite Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Final Destination 3, Grindhouse and Bobby), who plays Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd. She’s a breath of fresh air in this gruesome horror filled with 3D blood splatter.

Winstead lights up the screen from time her Mary Todd meets a younger Abe at a general store where he works. She also tears our hearts when her son dies after being bitten by a vampire. (Lincoln’s son actually died of typhoid fever, according to history.)

The actress confides that the cast and crew infused a certain sensitivity while filming especially in historic locations.

“For instance, we’d be shooting on old southern plantations where you could see the slave quarters, and you felt the seriousness of that place, and the history of it,” says Winstead. “And those were moments when you felt like, okay, I hope we’re doing this right, and I hope we’re showing people that we’re really not trying to be offensive in any way. We’re really just trying to show a metaphor for what happened.”

The Gettysburg Address near the end of the movie has an eerie feeling of authenticity that we felt we were transported back in time to witness the Great Emancipator invoke the principles of human equality under the Declaration of Independence and ensure the preservation of democracy so that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Hands down, this is the best vampire flick we have ever seen.

(Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is now showing in theaters from Twentieth Century Fox, to be distributed by Warner Bros.)