With a cast like this, where Sir Ian McKellen gets 5th or 6th billing, and with the money that was put into this, The Shadow should have been a lot better. Personally, I wish they'd stuck with Walter Gibson's Shadow from the pulps -- who did NOT have the power to cloud men's minds, and for whom Margo Lane was an infrequently-used agent rather than a girlfriend -- but the real problem is that the film's emotional center is ice cold. Alec Baldwin doesn't radiate warmth on good days, and the film makes no attempt to show his metamorphosis from sadistic killer to vigilante superhero lawman, so the audience, which has probably never encountered The Shadow before, has no reason to sympathize with him. This unbalances the entire film; it's hard to sit through 2 hours with a hero you don't care for. A good film, but it could have been much better. Check out THE PHANTOM to see this kind of thing done right.
Review of The Shadow
