Review: The Dark Tower – Guildford Odeon

Published on: 20 Aug, 2017
Updated on: 20 Aug, 2017

By Dennis Harvey-Hepherd

This film is based on the final book in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series.

We are presented with the good guy Roland (Idris Elba) and the bad guy Walter (Matthew McConaughey) ready made. There is no real character building attempted so making it difficult to cheer for the hero or boo the baddie.

Neither appears to be totally good or evil, other than wanting to kill each other and destroy or protect The Dark Tower. All we know of this tower is that it is at the centre of everything.

Into this mix comes a troubled boy who has visions of The Dark Tower etc.
This is then all mixed together in a recipe of sci-fi, western and coming-of-age genres to produce a very bland, soggy bottomed, sponge of a film.

With little of Stephen King’s trademark horror or complexity, it has clearly been diluted to get a 12A certificate.

I hope the younger audience members will get more from it than I did, even be inspired to read the original stories.

Could easily have been a lot better. Shame. Just 2 out of five stars this time.