Neil Jordan’s moody new film “Byzantium” is a sprawling,
novelistic take on a familiar genre. Not his first horror rodeo, the “Crying
Game” director offers up a revisionist approach to a vampire story. His film
contains many of the hallmarks you expect—eternal life, themes of undying love,
an epic scope that spans historical epochs. While this strategy has enough
twists and tweaks so that it fit doesn’t feel like a story you’ve witnessed a
thousand times before, the meandering nature is also its biggest drawback.
Occasionally bloody and violent, “Byzantium” is primarily a somber tale of a
woeful, savage life.
