'Abraham Lincoln' finely dices history

Abraham Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) has a two-pronged life mission: Kill vampires and be president, in that order. (Credit: Stephen Vaughan, 20th Century Fox)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (* * 1/2 stars out of four, R, opens Friday) does to history what its commander-in-chief does to the undead populace: mangles it beyond recognition.

That's not going to bother fans of the campy 2010 Seth Grahame-Smith novel upon which this movie is based. Moviegoers likely aren't coming for a refresher course on our 16th president or the Civil War.

Which is good, because they won't learn much here. Instead, they'll get a stylish slasher of a movie, a monster flick that does its vampires right, if not their real-life counterparts.

Directed by Timur Bekmambetov, this film could have been a one-note snoozer propelled by a catchy title, like 2006's Snakes on a Plane. And while the movie stumbles over almost anything that doesn't slurp blood, credit Bekmambetov with trying to say something larger than "walking corpses are creepy."

The film begins with an effective scene to validate its revisionist history: Lincoln (Benjamin Walker) watches his mother's murder at the hands of a vampire. (For the record, Nancy Lincoln died at 34 from "milk sickness," a common ailment at the time contracted by ingesting contaminated milk or bad beef.)

The death sends Lincoln — who looks like a young, awkward Liam Neeson— on a two-pronged mission: Kill vampires and be president, in that order.

Hunter goes way off track after the mother's death, and nearly derails with a rock-scored training montage that has become requisite viewing in any fight film.

The film layers some "history" into the story, like a brooding civil war and real-life characters, at least in name, including the free African-American William Johnson (the terrific Anthony Mackie), who was the president's valet and barber back then. Here, all that he shaves are the heads off marauders.

The fight scenes — especially the battle on a runaway train speckled in coal sparks — can be spectacular. As action films go, Hunter is hard to beat.

But oh, what it could have been. The film dances around solid themes: racism, nationhood, the embodiment of evil vs. the spirit of good.

Yet every time Hunter comes close to saying something, it slips into lazy writing. Confederate soldiers aren't much more likable than the vampires, who side with the South, of course. Union soldiers kill vampires while the Gettysburg Address is read in the background. Even its attempts at humor, especially Mary Todd nagging her husband that they'll be late for the play that ultimately kills him, make you wish Hunter would stick to the impalements.

And for the most part, it does. Despite its factual dismemberment of the movie's namesake, Hunter bristles as summer action fodder. Honest.

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