The DARK TOWER    2.5****

   The Dark Tower", is an adaptation of Stephen King's longest story offering as the series covered 8  books.  The series ran from 1982 to 2004  The movie tells the story of the last Gunslinger, Roland (played by Idris Elba) who has been locked in an eternal battle with Walter also known as the Man in Black (Mathew McConaughey), to prevent Walter  from toppling the Dark Tower. With the fate of the worlds at stake, good and evil collide leading up to  the ultimate battle between them since Roland is the only one who can defend the Tower from the Man in Black.   The Man in Black is fixated on destroying the Dark Tower, which protects the many worlds in the universe from the outside evils that look to destroy them. Along with a young boy from Earth with very special mind skills named Jake (Tom Taylor), Roland must find a way to save the universe . Roland is the last of the "Gunslingers", a Knight-like group who protect the world.  Roland is highly skilled and unlike his now dead father and other companions, is impervious to the deadly magic of Walter which has allowed him to remain alive and continue his quest to stop Walter.

The screenplay is awful (done by 4 writers which is always a bad sign). It goes all over the map in terms of tying to tie the quite lengthy story elements together. Having four screenwriters shows throughout as the story rises and falls .. but more often falls creating a huge lack of cohesiveness leading to a mediocre movie. Rumors of a 2 plus hour original run with more background on characters and the fantasy world Stephen King created would have been much better in giving depth to the characters and narrative. But the studio objected to such hefty run-time, and its quality has definitely suffered from its sparse 95 minute run time resulting in the loosely-strung-together story.

A few years back, Peter Jackson was somewhat criticized for turning a relatively slim book, THE HOBBIT, into a sequel of 3 very successful movies, adding characters and adventures that were not in Tolkien’s beloved novel to stretch the franchise out. THE DARK TOWER, has the opposite problem.  This thin (95 minute) film is based on  8 novels from Stephen King and so much is left out, that I walked away thinking I had just seen a Cliff Note's version of this material.  They had 8 novels to choose from, and instead of doing a film as the 1^st sequel, they wrongly decided to cram  all 8 novels into one short run time of 95 min. and that is just not enough time to engage even average viewers and is a tragedy for King fans. Actually this would have been great material for an HBO or Netflix miniseries.

One positive note is the performances. Matthew McConaughey as Walter/The Man in Black was perfection every time  he is on the screen.  He is a ruthless badass villain that he can kill you even without touching you. Idris Elba as Roland the last Gunslinger is basically perfection too.  He goes around shooting the bad guys with special 6-shooter pistols in the most badass way…. the dude is Chuck Norris and a young Clint Eastwood combined. Tom Taylor plays the kid Jake and is impressive and carries his role quite well.

Rated PG-13 for material including sequences of gun violence and action.