Starring Idris Elba, Tom Taylor, Matthew McConaughey

Directed by Nikolaj Arcel

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, out now

Jake Chambers is haunted by dreams of a Gunslinger and a Man in Black – as well as horrifying creatures. They can’t be real… can they?

The end credit notes that this movie is based on the Dark Tower novels by Stephen King – i.e. based on characters and situations created by the Master of Horror in his eight-book series. King fans have known for a long time that this isn’t a straight adaptation of the books, in the way that the comic strip has been – adding material in places, altering things to suit the medium etc. – but what can be seen as another turn of the Wheel in which the Gunslinger is going through events that are similar but different to those seen in the books. It’s a clever conceit and allows the scriptwriters – Nikolaj Arcel, Akiva Goldsman, Jeff Pinkner, Anders Thomas Jensen – to plunder elements from across the saga that will feel very familiar, yet still tell their own tale.

It’s a very different introduction to the saga from the way King started decades ago (although that iconic line does turn up). Our entry point is young Jake (whose backstory is considerably different in this version of “Keystone Earth”) who keeps seeing people in his dreams. He’s warned by a homeless man that kids like him are targeted, and when two people from a clinic come to take him for tests, he runs… The dreams allow us some insight into Mid-World, and we see Roland and his father face off against Walter, the Man in Black, as well as the introduction of the Gunslingers’ credo – all elements that feature later in the movie – before Jake and Roland meet.

The casting may have surprised many, but it works extremely well. Idris Elba’s Roland is the tortured figure of the early books, hellbent on revenge against Walter but slowly returning to the Gunslinger way. Some of the questions about how he can be so effective with just a six-shooter are answered (although there are a couple of moments towards the end of the movie when it feels like John Woo is directing a scene featuring the Punisher for Netflix, things are so far over the top in terms of bullets flying around and singularly failing to hit Roland). He also carries off the “fish out of water” sequences in New York far better than the rather cliched lines deserve!

Tom Taylor’s Jake is the lynchpin of the movie, and the young actor delivers a strong performance, with the bond between his character and Roland growing credibly, while Matthew McConaughey is suitably malevolent – often at his best in the throwaway moments (such as when Roland walks past a little girl near the Flatiron building in New York, or he exhorts New Yorkers to watch a fight that he’s just instigated) – but I hope a sequel gives him something a bit meatier to work with.

Probably in order to provide an easy entry point to the saga – which is hopefully going to continue on large and small screens – things are boiled down to their essentials in terms of motivations, and there’s a fair argument that it’s almost too simplistic. Against all the moments that evoke the books which perhaps only fans will get (you’re going to want to freezeframe this movie on Blu-ray to get all the Easter eggs) that could bog things down, there’s a clear narrative drive, and Nikolaj Arcel keeps things going at a rapid pace that sometimes does feel rushed.

When the first Harry Potter film came out, it was criticised for not including every single line from J K Rowling’s first book, but no one doubted that it felt like that first story. With this, it feels like the Stephen King multiverse has been brought to the big screen at last.

Verdict: For non-King fans, this hopefully comes across as a fast-paced introduction to what’s clearly a multi-layered world; for those of us who’ve journeyed with Roland to the Tower, it’s a very different version from what we might expect, but still an entertaining 95 minutes. 7/10

The Blu-ray extras are OK but a director’s commentary would really have helped. Four deleted scenes (whose omission feels odd), bloopers, narrated scenes from the text and some short pieces on the two central characters are present – the most interesting is the section on The World Has Moved On, which looks at the creation of the look of the movie.

Paul Simpson