The Shadow began as a pulp magazine hero was was featured in several movies in the late 1930s.
The 1994 movie wisely adopts for a period setting although it looks more 1940s than 1930s.
The movie gives us a backstory. Lamont Cranston (Alec Baldwin) is a very nasty American bandit operating somewhere in central Asia. He ends up as a prisoner in a monastery where he learns to deal with his inner demons.
He returns to America to become a force for good as a masked crime-fighter.
He has one super-power. He can cloud men’s minds. This gives him virtual invisibility - others are hypnotised into not seeing him.
Now he’s up against Shiwan Khan (John Lone), a descendant of Genghis Khan who has some similar hypnotic powers. Shiwan aims at world conquest. He plans to get hold of an atomic bomb. Such things do not yet exist (we assume the setting is the United States just before the Second World War) but Shiwan knows of a couple of eccentric genius scientists who may be able to invent one.
Lamont Cranston has one possibly useful ally. Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) is the daughter of one of the crazy scientists but she appears to have telepathic powers. Or at least she has the ability to make telepathic contact with Lamont Cranston.
I have a few reservations about this movie but they’re more matters of personal taste than actual criticisms.
Alec Baldwin is seriously lacking in charisma and charm. But given that it was decided to make Lamont Cranston a very dark tortured character constantly battling the darkness within him his casting works reasonably well. He does the tragic brooding ominous thing very well and overall his casting works.
I’m not sure that Penelope Ann Miller has the necessary star power. Margo Lane is more than just the hero’s love interest. She becomes his active ally. This movie needs a really strong female lead, especially with such a taciturn leading man. Compared to Jennifer Connelly in The Rocketeer, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Phantom or even Madonna in Dick Tracy she’s a little bland. I can’t help thinking of several other major female stars of the period who might have injected bit more life into the character. Nicole Kidman perhaps. Or Sharon Stone (who had demonstrated in King Solomon’s Mines that she could be a delightful adventure heroine). On the other hand Penelope Ann Miller is pretty, she’s likeable, she looks very good in period costumes and hairstyles and there’s nothing actually wrong about her performance.
At times the visuals are just slightly too reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Batman, but I must admit that The Shadow does the 1940s urban gothic thing very effectively.
Viewers unaware of The Shadow’s long pop culture history were likely to dismiss this movie as a mere Batman rip-off. In fact The Shadow as a character pre-dates Batman by a decade.
The biggest problem with these 90s attempts to launch new franchises was that these movies were horrendously expensive. It was not enough for them to do well at the box office. To justify a franchise they needed to be gigantic hits, which they weren’t.
Australian-born Russell Mulcahy was a solid choice to direct. One of this movie’s great strengths is that it doesn’t suffer from the problems that afflict so many movies of recent decades - bloat and poor pacing. It keeps powering along and there’s always something happening.
The Shadow is heavy on the urban gothic noir vibe but with moments influenced by old Hollywood musicals and even (as Penelope Ann Miller quite correctly points out in her interview) some nice screwball comedy touches. The dynamics of the Lamont Cranston-Margo Lane relationship are structured in a very screwball comedy way.
It’s very special effects-heavy but they are done extremely well. There’s some CGI (CIG was around but still in its infancy) but Mulcahy preferred practical effects and that’s mostly what we get. It really is a great-looking movie.
The Shadow delivers dazzling visuals, thrills and adventure. That’s more than enough to keep me happy. Highly recommended.
He has one super-power. He can cloud men’s minds. This gives him virtual invisibility - others are hypnotised into not seeing him.
Now he’s up against Shiwan Khan (John Lone), a descendant of Genghis Khan who has some similar hypnotic powers. Shiwan aims at world conquest. He plans to get hold of an atomic bomb. Such things do not yet exist (we assume the setting is the United States just before the Second World War) but Shiwan knows of a couple of eccentric genius scientists who may be able to invent one.
Lamont Cranston has one possibly useful ally. Margo Lane (Penelope Ann Miller) is the daughter of one of the crazy scientists but she appears to have telepathic powers. Or at least she has the ability to make telepathic contact with Lamont Cranston.
I have a few reservations about this movie but they’re more matters of personal taste than actual criticisms.
Alec Baldwin is seriously lacking in charisma and charm. But given that it was decided to make Lamont Cranston a very dark tortured character constantly battling the darkness within him his casting works reasonably well. He does the tragic brooding ominous thing very well and overall his casting works.
I’m not sure that Penelope Ann Miller has the necessary star power. Margo Lane is more than just the hero’s love interest. She becomes his active ally. This movie needs a really strong female lead, especially with such a taciturn leading man. Compared to Jennifer Connelly in The Rocketeer, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Phantom or even Madonna in Dick Tracy she’s a little bland. I can’t help thinking of several other major female stars of the period who might have injected bit more life into the character. Nicole Kidman perhaps. Or Sharon Stone (who had demonstrated in King Solomon’s Mines that she could be a delightful adventure heroine). On the other hand Penelope Ann Miller is pretty, she’s likeable, she looks very good in period costumes and hairstyles and there’s nothing actually wrong about her performance.
At times the visuals are just slightly too reminiscent of Tim Burton’s Batman, but I must admit that The Shadow does the 1940s urban gothic thing very effectively.
Viewers unaware of The Shadow’s long pop culture history were likely to dismiss this movie as a mere Batman rip-off. In fact The Shadow as a character pre-dates Batman by a decade.
The biggest problem with these 90s attempts to launch new franchises was that these movies were horrendously expensive. It was not enough for them to do well at the box office. To justify a franchise they needed to be gigantic hits, which they weren’t.
Australian-born Russell Mulcahy was a solid choice to direct. One of this movie’s great strengths is that it doesn’t suffer from the problems that afflict so many movies of recent decades - bloat and poor pacing. It keeps powering along and there’s always something happening.
The Shadow is heavy on the urban gothic noir vibe but with moments influenced by old Hollywood musicals and even (as Penelope Ann Miller quite correctly points out in her interview) some nice screwball comedy touches. The dynamics of the Lamont Cranston-Margo Lane relationship are structured in a very screwball comedy way.
It’s very special effects-heavy but they are done extremely well. There’s some CGI (CIG was around but still in its infancy) but Mulcahy preferred practical effects and that’s mostly what we get. It really is a great-looking movie.
The Shadow delivers dazzling visuals, thrills and adventure. That’s more than enough to keep me happy. Highly recommended.