Like Jackman’s other big action role, as Wolverine in the X-Men movies, he’s a man who cannot remember his past. But as Wolverine Jackman brilliantly projected a wounded lost soul. As Van Helsing, he just looks lost. Speaking rarely, the character is intended as a man of few words, but he’s borderline mute for long stretches of Van Helsing. I’d guess that nearly a fourth of all the words he utters in the entire movie were included on the film’s two minute trailer.

I don’t think Van Helsing is as bad as some people claim, but it does have a lot of problems, not the least of which being the leading character’s blandness. It has a lot of great ideas and a couple truly fun moments, but it also suffers because of them. At 130 minutes, with loads of subplots and supporting characters, it feels long and way too forced. It borrows heavily from classic Universal horror, but it cherrypicks which rules it wants to follow making it hard to keep track exactly how one becomes a vampire or when you can turn into a werewolf. It also has more ominous lightning flashes per minute of running time than possibly any other movie in motion picture history.

Van Helsing works for a secret organization in the Catholic church that protects mankind from evil. He’s good at his job but he doesn’t like what he does (You’d be miserable too if your life was killing monsters and being branded a murderer by the rest of society). After a cool prologue featuring a “guest” monster, Van Helsing and his Q-like monk sidekick Carl (David Wenham) is sent to Transylvania to kill Dracula (Richard Roxburgh) and protect Anna (Kate Beckinsale), the last of a line of vampire hunters. I had problems with all of these characters. Comic relief Carl is only intermittently funny, throwing the balance of humor and scares well off from where it seems to have been intended (though to Van Helsing’s credit, it will jolt you out your seat on a number of occasions). Meanwhile, both Roxburgh and Beckinsale slog through annoying, hammy accents. I have no idea whether they are accurate representations of Eastern European dialects. I do know that neither one is very fun to listen to for over two hours.

Dracula is sort of a bust, but his legion of monsters do deliver the horror goods. Several entirely CGI werewolves look great (not to mention scary as hell) and Sommers’ version of Frankenstein’s monster, as played Shuler Hensley, is an interesting and well-executed take on the character (with great makeup by Greg Cannom). And the way Sommers combines all these characters into one logical plot is impressive, at least for an act or two. Even Dracula’s trio of naked winged brides manage to pull off a couple of juicy action scenes. Jackman’s certainly up to the task of the action requirements of his role; he brings a ferocious intensity and believability to tasks like shooting a silly looking machine gun crossbow.