Monday at the Movies - July 2, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, a forgotten film with comic book ties – it’s the pulpy adaptation of The Shadow.

The Shadow (1994) – In my ongoing effort to see and review any superhero movie I can get my hands on, it’s worth enrolling The Shadow in that tradition. Based on the hero of pulp novels and radio programs, from whom we can trace a direct line to Batman, The Shadow introduces Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston, a man who “knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men” because he’s intimately acquainted with the darkness in his own heart. After a Tibetan prologue that feels presciently similar to the first act of Doctor Strange, Baldwin dons a black hat and red scarf to fight crime in New York City, where a descendant of Genghis Khan (John Lone) has come to finish his ancestor’s work of conquest. As a devout fan of The Rocketeer, I had hoped that The Shadow would live up to that brand of retro-heroism; it doesn’t, though it does feel a lot like Rocketeer by way of Sam Raimi’s Darkman. The Shadow does an excellent job inhabiting a noir-esque version of New York between world wars, effortlessly classy and yet sufficiently dangerous. It also boasts a frankly astonishing cast of talented players in minor roles – Tim Curry as a sycophantic assistant, Peter Boyle as a cabbie, Jonathan Winters as a police commissioner, and Ian McKellen as an atomic scientist – all gifted character actors whose ilk we just don’t seem to have anymore, charming and magnetic screen presences no matter what they’re doing. As Margo Lane, Penelope Ann Miller more than keeps up with Baldwin, though the film never quite seems to know what to do with her. Nor does the film’s plot quite hang together as tightly as it pretends; many of the scenes feel fairly perfunctory, without sufficient character development to justify subplots of romance or archrivalry. The Shadow instead feels like a movie that paints by the numbers without obscuring those same numbers, including one moment when a title card explains a multiyear gap between scenes. The Shadow is ultimately somewhat charming, unmistakably of its time, and a property direly in need of being revisited now that Hollywood has a better sense of how to mine such rich source material. The Shadow is perhaps forgotten by virtue of not excelling, but its quaint approach to the process of adaptation merits it a place – if a curious one – alongside bygone efforts like Rocketeer, Dick Tracy, and The Phantom.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!