Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro) is an actor playing Hamlet in London.  He learns from his brother's fiancée (Emily Blunt) that his brother has gone missing.   Lawrence goes home to a place he hasn't been for years only to learn his brother's corpse has been found.  He tries to find out whom or what did it.  In the process after talking with a gypsy woman, he is mauled by a werewolf and survives.  He is cursed with the wolf and his life goes out of control as he finds out the truth about his father's past (the father is played by Anthony Hopkins).

THE WOLFMAN has excellent production and costume design.  It is filmed in a moody way with a great score by Danny Elfman.   The acting is solid, but the script is what lets the project down.   It has a few threads that could have been developed more like the romance angle with his dead brother's fiancée and giving us a little more info about the Scotland Yard inspector that Hugo Weaving plays.  Then the ending is disappointing.   THE WOLFMAN has great action and gore.    I guessed who the main character was bitten by early on.  THE WOLFMAN first seemed like a surface picture, but it is a psychological drama about man’s nature.    It is also the struggle between father and son.   THE WOLFMAN is a horror film told as a Shakespearean tragedy.   

The Unrated Director’s Cut adds most of the additional 16 minutes to the first half of the film including the beginning being more detailed including how Lawrence decided to go home to Blackmoor (which includes a cameo by Max Von Sydow).

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Five deleted and extended scenes are on the first disc and I think the extended London chase scene should have remained in the film.

Disc two is exclusive to Best Buy and it feature four behind-the-scenes featurettes that total a little over 45 minutes.

RETURN OF THE WOLFMAN-   a promotional featurette that focuses on the cast, characters, and the story (and how it is different from the original Wolfman while respecting it)

THE BEAST MAKER-   a featurette on master creature make-up artist Rick Baker and the Wolfman make-up he created for the film.  Rick Baker had to be part of the project when he heard of it and Anthony Hopkins was finally sold on doing the film after seeing Rick’s make-up work.

TRANSFORMATION SECRETS-   all the CGI work that went into transforming Del Toro and Hopkins into werewolves and the other visual CGI work in the movie.

THE WOLFMAN UNLEASHED-   the stunt work of THE WOLFMAN which involved some wire work

FINAL ANALYSIS:   I was first disappointed by THE WOLFMAN in theaters only to appreciate it the second time for a tragedy that is one part horror film and one part Shakespearean tragedy.

This DVD Review is (c)6-3-2010 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to lord_pragmagtic@hotmail.com