Movie Review: "Daybreakers" with Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe

Vampires busily bite a bloody path through Hollywood. There's the Twilight movies (Kristen Stewart), the Underworld movies (Kate Beckinsale), and a toothy maw of more. I'm an old school vampire guy. Vampires intrigue me as far more effectively creepy when they're bloodthirsty creatures like Dracula or Nosferatu, than dewy eyed Lotharios romancing teens so in vogue lately. Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee gave some of the greatest classic vampire portrayals, and though showed hints of human emotion, they never strayed far from base undead instincts of dark creatures of the night. To them humanity is little more than cattle - a food source. In this most basic motivational stroke, Daybreakers gets the inhuman equation right.

Directed by Australian brothers Peter and Michael Spierig, the film offers a world where the metaphorical climate drips heavy with depicting vampires as society's gluttons, but since most of us are now blood drinkers, the old materialism of amassing wealth or power is boiled down to scurrying around slurping up humanity's liquid life. Ethan Hawke plays vampire Ed Dalton, a scientist employee of Charles Bromley (Sam Neil), who runs a huge pharmaceutical outfit supplying blood to the long toothed masses. Neil (Jurassic Park) is one of my favorite actors, and doesn't work nearly enough for me. Unfortunately his performance here, while serviceable, never fully connects. He plays a run of the mill corporate villain. When his daughter enters into the scene, the developing subplot, while important, fails to resonate as emotionally as it should. Screenplay can and must be faulted for scarcity of emotional texture, as Neil isn't given enough to flesh into anything more than a two dimensional baddie.

Dalton's brother (Michael Dorman) is a military man. He doesn't fight Taliban in Afghanistan or Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, but hunts down renegade humans. There's not many left who aren't vampires, and the remainder struggle as a ragtag rebel force determined to change the world back into the full flower of untainted humanity. This human hunter storm trooper angle is a powerful aspect to the plot. When Hawke starts to question an entire society based on sucking the blood of others, the brothers are destined to clash both philosophically and physically.

Willem Dafoe is standout here. Dafoe has matured into one of the most dependable, unpredictable and plain wildly talented actors. He's a human rebel who was a vamp himself, and his nickname is Elvis. He stumbles on a vampire cure by exposing a water soaked blood sucker to daylight. When Hawke and Dafoe join forces with the scrappy rebels, the stage is now set for a confrontation pitting vampire brothers against each other, and a vamp father against his human rebel daughter.

Daybreakers should please both cinema and vampire lovers. The film's moody lighting, great sets, interesting locations and intriguing cinematography bolster fine acting and intriguing ideas about social class, touching on real world issues like feeding and powering our ever growing global population. Sadly, it lacks sufficient emotional depth, and its screenplay needed a few more drafts. Ultimately, we can't care enough about these characters like say the tortured Dracula of Gary Oldman or Frank Langella on film, or even David Boreanaz in Angel on TV. Daybreakers show vampires who are pretty mundane, even everyday folks - there's nothing awe inspiring about them. It may have been just where the filmmakers wanted to go, and though I liked it, my old school vamp vibe has me merely nibble here, not fully sink my fangs inside.