Daybreakers

 

Daybreakers 2009

• Director: The Spierig Brothers
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, Willem Dafoe, Harriet Minto-Day, Michael Dorman, Isabel Lucas
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Ethan Hawke – Stockholm, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, Maudie, Cymbeline, Before Midnight, Hamlet, Snow Falling on Cedars, Gattaca, Before Sunrise, Reality Bites, Waterland, Dead Poets Society
• Sam Neill – Blackbird, A Long Way Down, Little Fish, Jurassic Park, Skin, The Piano, Ivanhoe
• Willem Dafoe – many
• Chris Klein – American Dreamz
• Why? Vampires. Good cast.
• Seen: 30 August 2023      

       Vampires have taken over the world. Their lives and cities are pretty much like the ones we have today but they are slowly starving for lack of human blood. The army hunts down humans who are then hung up to be drained of their blood. But there aren’t many humans left either.  

       Edward (Hawke) is a haematologist, working to find a surrogate blood for the company that drains the blood of humans. His brother Frankie (Dorman) is a soldier, a human hunter.

       Edward helps some human escape and they in turn ask for help in the cure they have discovered.

       The film is intelligent, imaginative, different and quite exciting. The problems are Dafoe, who can be good, is here annoyingly macho, the clothing of the two main women characters is gender stereotyped (cleavage) and there’s too much shoot ‘em up action. Sam Neill is also a little hammy. 

3 ½ * of 5