The Shadow

The Shadow (1994), based upon the classic radio and pulp serials of the same name, has not aged particularly well over the past 15 years. When I was just a lad of 11, I first watched this movie and thought it was great. It had everything: invisible guys, invisible buildings, bombs, cool cars, maniacal laughing, a sentient and murderous knife, communicating rings, and an attractive female lead (and yes, I could appreciate an attractive female lead at 11; I was an early bloomer). The film was a great superhero/crimefighter movie in the tradition of Tim Burton’s Batman films, but it always felt different somehow, probably owing to its origins not as a comic book, but as a radio serial.

But 1994 was a long time ago, both for me and for superhero movies. I’ve grown up somewhat; I expect a little more out of the movies I watch these days. And superhero films have definitely grown up. With the recent releases of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and the upcoming Watchmen, the superhero genre has been completely revamped. These are serious movies now, dealing with more realized characters, deep psychosocial themes, and garnering some serious critical and popular acclaim. Superhero movies have moved on, and hopefully they won’t be going back. Films like The Shadow and the first 4 installments of the Batman series, as well as a host of others ranging from The Fantastic Four to Elektra, are now little more than silly relics, reminders of when the genre was all about flash, and nothing about substance.

So it is with this genre sea change in mind that I recently viewed The Shadow for the first time in many years. First, let’s talk about the good, those few things that have held up.

The most obvious positive to my eye is Alec Baldwin’s performance as the title character and his alter ego, Lamont Cranston. Look, regardless of what the man has done in his personal life lately, and of how smarmy his characters have become of late, the man can act. He can act circles around most of the other schmucks currently slinking around the Hollywood scene. Granted, he has precious little help in this particular film, dealing with a ridiculous character and a poorly written script. But, true to form, he plays it for all he’s worth. I’ve never seen Baldwin half-ass his way through any role, regardless of how ridiculous or pointless it is. In fact, Baldwin’s performance may have actually benefitted from him backing off a tad. He plays Lamont’s sometimes ludicrous dialogue (including the aforementioned maniacal laugh) over-the-top, where a more subtle interpretation may have been a better fit.

Um, let’s see, what else is good? The music is fair, if a little unoriginal, sounding pretty much like a myriad of other blockbuster and thriller scores. This is unsurprising considering the film was scored by Jerry Goldsmith, a legend in his own right with over 240 film and TV composer credits in a career spanning 5 decades. I suppose after so many scores, you tend to develop some trademark musical themes that are revisited in most of your work.

The effects, art direction, and set design are a mixed bag here. Some of the effects are truly awesome, particularly the unveiling of the main villian’s base of operations. One of the main obstacles in this movie was creating a believable 1930s New York. On the small-scale, the art department has succeeded with appropriate costumes and vehicles (even if one of them is The Shadow’s souped-up taxi). But many of the sets are quite obviously anchored by a matte painting, poorly blended into the scene with the help of digital touch-ups. And some “outdoor” scenes are just as obviously filmed on a sound stage under artificial light. It’s one thing to know that your favorite movie is actually created and filmed on a studio sound stage, but it’s quite another thing to see this artificiality in the film itself.

Now, let’s really move on to the bad aspects of this film, because there are quite a few.

Aside from Baldwin, the performances here range from simply lackluster to laughably bad. I blame the actors, writers, and director for this. To start, Penelope Ann Miller and Ian McKellan, playing Lamont’s love interest Margo Lane and her father Reinhardt, are little more than place-holders. Miller succeeds admirably at playing the prototypical ‘30s dame, and not distinguishing herself in any way. And to waste the formidable talents of Ian McKellan on an absent-minded physicist who gets about 7 minutes of total screentime? That’s just unforgivable.

And let’s not forget the laughably bad acting: props go to John Lone and Tim Curry in this category. Lone plays the main villain, Shiwan Khan, descendant of the great Genghis Khan, and Curry is his smarmy, loopy pet physicist and wannabe dictator, Farley Claymore. Lone’s portrayal of Shiwan Khan is boring at best. There is no real menace, no real anger, no real anything. He’s the hollow figurehead of evil power with no real emotion or character development to back it up.

And Curry? He gets practically no screentime in the first half of the movie. Barely enough to establish that he’s skeazy, possibly unethical, and that he’s making a beryllium sphere, a key component to make Shiwan Khan’s atom bomb. How convenient. Then suddenly he appears out of nowhere, defies The Shadow’s attempts to control his mind (blatantly copied from Obi Wan Kenobe’s jedi mind trick), outsmarts The Shadow, and nearly kills him. Fast forward 20 minutes in the film, and The Shadow has the upper hand on Claymore and manages to drive him completely insane in a matter of 15 seconds through the use of….. get ready for it…. teasing and taunting. Yep, The Shadow just eludes Claymore’s bullets for about 15 seconds while simultaneously hurling insults at him, and the guy cracks like a rotten egg. Curry’s eyes get huge and luminous and he begins screeching and laughing like an idiot. It’s like he’s still trying to play Pennywise the Dancing Clown from Stephen King’s It. Guess what, Tim? Screeching and laughing and generally being batshit insane works when you’re playing a maniacal clown, but not so much when you’re just a bit-part physicist with aspirations to power.

Well, let’s see….. I’ve gone over the mediocre music, the spotty effects, the poor character development and acting. What else? Oh yes, getting back to the big picture: you’re not really expected to take this movie seriously. This is another in a long line of throw-away superhero movies, made in the hopes of a big box-office draw (mainly powered by kids dragging their families along), but not much else. It’s silly but rarely funny. It eschews any sense of realism for over-the-top superhero fantasy. Oh, it’s probably still fun for kids, but most adults will be looking for something a little more substantial from this type of film.

Plot & storyline: 5/10

Cinematography & effects: 4/10

Music & mood: 5/10

Performances: 4/10

The Reverend says: 5/10