Entertainment

‘Wolfman’ a strange beast

Benicio Del Toro as a hairy psycho who roams the land on a deranged murder spree while driven by a monstrous disease? I thought this movie was called “Che.”

No, it’s “The Wolfman,” though Del Toro again crosses the sea to rescue an island nation’s peasants (who wind up wishing he’d never gotten on a boat).

B. Del T. is actor Lawrence Talbot, a Shakespearean thespian working the New York stages called home to England by a letter from his brother’s girlfriend (Emily Blunt) informing him that his brother’s gone missing. Once Lawrence arrives, though, his frosty dad (Anthony Hopkins) informs him that he needn’t have bothered — the cherished sibling’s been torn apart by a savage man-beast. Lawrence resolves to stay until the killer is found, but wandering the forest at night in the presence of a bloodthirsty murder machine turns out not to be as smart as you’d think.

VIDEO: “THE WOLFMAN” MOVIE REVIEW

As a story, “The Wolfman” is a strange beast. Think of another popcorn movie in which you’d have a relatively happy ending if only the hero killed himself in Act 2. Yet the movie is pungent with atmosphere, laying down a thick fog of creepy Victorian murk, with tight action scenes and without the cheesy one-liners and would-be hipness of “Sherlock Holmes,” which takes place at the same time, 1891. Still, the story can never quite sink its claws into you.

Our shaggy protagonist — this Chia Pet “Incredible Hulk” — is neither hero nor villain. Make him full-on evil, like Dracula or the Mummy, and you’ve got a cool monster movie. Make him a richly tortured soul searching for a cure or at least some self-control, like the Hulk or Frankenstein’s creature, and you’ve got tragic potential. This movie can’t even give wolfie a genuine love story. Blunt asks him, “What’s it like in New York?” and it’s like every other awkward first date.

The supposed villains — such as a Scotland Yard detective (Hugo Weaving — him again?) are merely trying to save innocent lives, a fact even Dogbreath implicitly acknowledges.

Yet the best scenes are nastily effective. Perhaps the best is one set in a morally polluted “Elephant Man”-styled London where Lawrence, a prisoner at a mental hospital, comes in for some harsh reprogramming by a Dr. Strangelove-like shrink. But even in this case, high-grade visuals conceal a story flaw: Why would the doc think werewolfiness is all in Lawrence’s mind when an entire village has witnessed the wolfman getting down to business?

Like buffalo meat, “The Wolfman” is a little too lean for its own good. Who is Lawrence, really? What is the measure of his anguish? A movie longer than 90 minutes might have had time to explain. We don’t even get a backstory about the silver bullets. All the villagers are simply aware that this is the only way to kill a werewolf, as if they all looked it up on Wikipedia.

The story would be more exciting if it were a matter of the wolfman outsmarting himself, arranging to be chained up at every full moon and trying to stay ahead of the police long enough to find a cure — but, as the Gypsies who lurk in the forest spewing ancient wisdom tell us, lycanthropy is a one-way street.

Oh, there’s one little mystery to be solved, but it’s so simple that even Marmaduke could have sniffed it out — plus there’s no reason for Lawrence not to have known the truth all along. So Lawrence is left with one not-all-that-challenging task to follow through on.

But if you’re not in a thinky mood, director Joe Johnston stages the climax more than adequately, with much snarling beastiness. When in doubt, set fire to the set? Works for me. As a spooky midnight movie, “The Wolfman” is worth curling up with.

kyle.smith@nypost.com