Van Helsing is a big, expensive and cynical Hollywood product, playing more like a video game than an actual movie. Yeah, I know that's what all the critics said when the movie was released in theaters, but they also said that about director Stephen Sommers' other movies ( Deep Rising, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns ), but at least those had some interesting characters, good dialogue and a healthy sense of humor. All Van Helsing has to offer is wall-to-wall special effects, and while those effects are often quite good, visuals alone do not a movie make.

Hugh Jackman plays the title character, the same Van Helsing from Dracula , though he could just as easily be named Van Halen or Van Morrison for all that actually remains of Stoker's heroic character here. He's sort of a Vatican hitman, assigned to hunt and destroy monsters & evil creatures all over Europe during the 19 th Century. He's also "the most wanted man in Europe," mainly because he's viewed by the general public as a murderer, though that plot point is never really explored. After quickly dispatching Dr. Jekyll's Hyde monster (an agressively stupid opening set-piece), he's ordered to go to Transylvania, where the townspeople have been suffering from a vampire problem in the form of Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh). But this ain't your grandaddy's Dracula of old...he's got a lotta people working for him, including werewolves and Dr. Frankenstein's Igor (Kevin J. O'Connor), who betray's his old master after his legendary monster (Shuler Hensley) is brought to life. It seems Dracula needs Frankenstein's monster to awaken his own offspring (though it's never really explained why). Complicating the assignment is Anna Valerious (Kate Beckinsale, playing virtually the same brooding, kick-ass, S&M, leather-clad babe she did in Underworld ), who's the last surviving member of a Transylvanian family damned to Purgatory until Dracula is killed. Together, along with Frankenstein's monster and comic relief Carl (David Wenham, who's amusing as sort of a 19 th century "Q"), they struggle to kill Dracula before his thousands of offspring can wreak havoc upon the world. That's pretty much the story, and it's amazing the movie manages to squeeze it in among the overwhelming special effects and hyperkinetic action scenes. One thing there isn't any room for is characterization. Even though Van Helsing sports an impressive cast, none of them are given much to work with, existing mainly to look cool in leather and scowl at the appropriate time when killing something. We simply don't care about any of these people. The lone exception is Hensley as the monster; not only is Frankenstein's creation impressively realized, Hensley demonstrates a lot of talent in making the character more than a cardboard creation, considering the mountains of make-up he's piled under. The real stars of the show are the CGI effects, which are here in abundance. The problem is that CGI is no longer such a novelty, and when characters can be tossed 50 feet without a scratch, or perform physically impossible stunts they could not have done otherwise, it's obvious that CGI can do more harm than good to a movie's effectiveness. In Jurassic Park , CGI served the story, and we bought the illusion. Here, we are never convinced we're watching anything but techno-geeks at work.

Despite my reservations about the movie, the transfer to DVD is excellent. This is admittedly a great looking movie, and the picture nicely preserves the effective use of blue and black tones. And of course, being a mega-budget action flick, the sound quality is top-notch, rendered in 5.1 Dolby Digital. There's great creative work with the movie's soundtrack, and there are few movies I've watched this year that sound as good as this one.

There are some really good extras included here, especially considering there's also a deluxe edition floating around on video shelves. There are two full-length audio commentaries; the first one is by director Sommers and producer Bob Ducsay; the second is by actors Roxburgh, Hensley and Will Kemp. The former is the better of the two, simply because of Sommers, whose work I usually admire in a guilty pleasure sort of way. I didn't care for the second one, mainly because the actors featured aren't really in the movie as much as the principles. Also included is a nifty feature called "You Are in the Movie," which shows some scenes shot from hidden cameras, which the actors didn't even know about. Other features include "Explore Dracula's Castle," which is interactive but sort of dull, "Bringing the Monsters to Life," which shows how various creatures were created, and "The Legend of Van Helsing," which is more-or-less a promo type of featurette (focused more on the Van Helsing character as depicted in this movie rather than how he's been portrayed throughout Hollywood history). There's also a blooper reel, which is pretty damned funny, theatrical trailers and a plug for Shrek 2. If you have an X-Box (which I don't), you can pop this disc into your console and play a demo of the Van Helsing game. Similar Movies: The Mummy; Dracula; Frankenstein; Waxwork

While I didn't expect Van Helsing to be the be-all-end-all of action movies, this is a disappointing film. Stephen Sommers has always injected a lot of fun and humor into his high-concept ideas, and I'm sad to report there's little that fun present here. It's all wall-to-wall visual effects, hurled at us in such abundance that they cease to be thrilling after about fifteen minutes.