‘Dark Tower’ wasn’t carefully constructed

By Jake Coyle

AP Film Writer

Ah, August. It’s that time of year when you can head to your local multiplex to see Matthew McConaughey as an interplanetary David Copperfield who’s trying to use his “magics” to destroy a looming tower that protects the universe from ready-to-invade hordes of demons that linger just outside the universe. So, I guess, pretty far out there in space.

To be fair, this August boasts some of the more intriguing films of the summer, such as Steven Soderbergh’s triumphant return (“Logan Lucky”) and Kathryn Bigelow’s furious race-riots docudrama (“Detroit”). “The Dark Tower,’ though, is the more traditional late-summer offering: a long-in-development, not-ready-for-prime-time studio dump.

A litany of directors, including J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard, has tried to crack Stephen King’s magnum opus, a series of seven novels he wrote over more than two decades. But after much shuffling, “The Dark Tower” has finally arrived via director Nikolaj Arcel, who penned the 2009 Swedish adaptation of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and helmed the 18th century Danish period drama “A Royal Affair.”

The special effects-heavy fantasy is a leap in production size that outstrips Arcel. The film has the unmistakable air of a mitigated disaster. Its scope and running time have seemingly been reined in to keep “The Dark Tower” from completely toppling. What’s left is an elaborate and grand scheme told briskly but emptily – as if someone tried to explain the HBO series “Westworld” in 30 seconds or less.

“Westworld” surely took some of its inspiration from “The Dark Tower,” a soupy mix of sci-fi, horror, Western and Arthurian legend. The elaborate concoction of genres – it’s King to the max – would likely humble most any filmmaker. We have, as a civilization, found a way to marry Taco Bells with Pizza Huts, but the combo of wizards and cowboys remains a vexing one.

After a brief hint of what’s to come, the movie opens in modern New York City with a young teenager: Jake Chambers (newcomer Tom Taylor). His dreams are plagued by visions of an alternate world, Mid-World, where he sees a gunslinger named Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) battling the Man in Black (McConaughey), who’s hell-bent, for reasons unknown, on ending the universe.

Elba is, as usual, a powerful force on the screen who deserves better. McConaughey’s character, though, is more outlandish. Thanks to his team of henchmen, the Man in Black zips between worlds like no one else. His dark powers are such that he can catch bullets between his fingers and, to nearly all but Roland, give flip commands like “Stop breathing” and the victim will promptly keel over.

But “The Dark Tower” is never quite a punchline. Such actors as Elba and McConaughey are too good, the youngster Taylor acquits himself well and the tale is on fairly stable ground while on Keystone Earth. Mid-World and its necessary special effects, however, not so much.

Reaching half-heartedly for the epic only makes “The Dark Tower” appear all the smaller.

You begin to hope that midway to Mid-World, McConaughey and Elba will just call time out and start acting out a new season of “True Detective” together.