Make no mistake, the hero of this is the Gun. Roland (Idris Elba) is the last in a long line of gunslingers living on a distant planet. His credo, pronounced with solemn piety before he shoots his victim, is ‘I kill with my heart’ – and he’s the good guy!
The villain is Walter (Matthew McConaughey), a satanic, omnipotent figure whose goal it is to destroy the Tower that maintains peace in the Universe. This particular Tower is only vulnerable to the minds of children who have a rare ‘shine’ about them – Jake (Tom Taylor) is one of those rare children. Walter wants to capture the boy to fulfil his wicked ambition, while Roland buddies-up with the kid to protect him. Jake lives with his widowed Mom (Katheryn Winnick) in, of all places, New York City – do futuristic movies such as this happen anywhere else? Meaning that what we are to accept as a given is that it is not the survival of the Universe that is at stake, but that of the Big Apple (hence the title – the Tower must not fall). There are some pretty good bits before director Nikolaj Arcel lets the action fly into overdrive, but insight, observation and character development go missing.
Elba has a powerful screen presence, but it’s more interesting to watch McConaughey prance around as the black-clad Antichrist. His career has taken him from rom-com lead to highly lauded dramatic performances and now, probably for the biggest bucks of them all, headlining in a blockbuster that requires him to do little more than recite his simplistic lines in front of a green screen.
Based on a series of novels by Stephen King (I am an admirer of the prolific writer, but have not read these stories), the gifted youngster plays the crucial role of catalyst and Taylor is a classical Spielberg naïf. But it’s a particularly blokey adventure, and oddly so, given the regular appearance in recent years of strong female characters who are also excellent at killing people.
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