Entertainment

‘Lincoln’ delivers Emancipation Abe-omination

Don’t let the stupid title dissuade you from seeing “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Let the stupid plot, the stupid history, the stupid action scenes, the stupid trivializing of slavery . . .

On an unfortunate-ideas scale of one to 10, with one being “wearing white pants after Labor Day” and five being “Green Lantern,” this one rates about a fourscore and seven.

Vampires, it turns out, were murdering American pioneers before an informal treaty saw them banished mostly to the South, where they were given the OK to feast on slaves and indirectly start the Civil War. This movie is loud, but I could barely hear it above the sound of jaws dropping on the floor.

As a boy, young Abe defends a black kid who gets beaten by an evil employer, who also turns out to be a vampire and kills Abe’s mom. Local vampire-killing expert Henry (Dominic Cooper, failing to blend into 1820s Indiana with his British accent) agrees to train Abe as a master assassin, who chops off heads and limbs with his vampiricide, silver-tipped ax.

As Abe uses up some screen time dispatching a list of easily slain subsidiary vampires, he awaits his big chance to get the one (Marton Csokas) who killed his mother, and a couple of assistant villains (Rufus Sewell, Erin Wasson). But he decides politics is a greater antimonster weapon. So: If vampires were Northerners, maybe Abe would have supported slavery?

I didn’t know whether to be more offended as a moviegoer or as an American, but I do know I’d rather gargle nitroglycerine than watch this again, though given that the film looks like it were buried under a log cabin for a century, I barely saw it the first time.

A dusty case in point: Lincoln’s chase of the lead vampire in a city suddenly, bizarrely turns into a murky CGI horse stampede across the prairie. During which a bad guy throws a horse at Lincoln. I realize vampires are hard to kill, but why is Abe uninjured after plummeting off a cliff at about 60 miles per hour? He’s not a superhero, just a guy with an ax twirling around fast-slow-fast. Who knew Honest Abe invented Matrix Time?

Playing Lincoln is a guy named Benjamin Walker, who reminded me of one of the most notable Lincoln portrayers: Robo-Abe in Disney World’s Hall of Presidents. Nudged only slightly — Scruffy the Vampire Slayer? — this material could have acknowledged its absurdity and been a zany Mel Brooks-ian comedy, but all-American director Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted”) maintains an Ed Wood-level earnestness throughout as he asks us to consider that Gettysburg might have been turned around by a secret shipment of vampire-killing silver projectiles. Wait — don’t you handle vamps with crosses and holy water? Shouldn’t they save the silver bullets for the sequel, “Mahatma Gandhi: Werewolf Butcher”? Never mind.

Why is the story about Lincoln, anyway? Because if it were just a random backwoods monster-slaughtering yokel whose tiny girlfriend stands on his stovepipe hat to kiss him (is it reinforced with oak?), nobody would care. Lincoln is the random celebrity hook for a buzz-fed culture in which everyone you’ve heard of is essentially a guest at the same cocktail party of history. So: the Soup Nazi is kinda like Hitler, Nicole Richie equals Niccolo Machiavelli, Shakira is a peer of Shakespeare.

Whatever, they’ve all been on Gawker, right?