Amy's The Dark Tower Movie Review: "I Kill with My Heart"

I went to see the movie The Dark Tower last night which was based on the Stephen King novels and was pleasantly surprised. If I am skeptical about a movie, I always read the reviews from Focus on the Family’s website, Plugged In Online. Their reviewers tell each and every part of the films being reviewed, so you’re never walking into a theater not knowing what you are about to see. If I feel weird about the content after reading one of their reviews, I just don’t go.

I’ve never read a Stephen King novel, nor have I seen any of the film versions of his books, so this was a new experience for me. His book, On Writing, was excellent however.

Critics didn’t have much good to say about it, but I am going to assume they’ve all read the series of books and are comparing the film to them. Obviously, it is pretty much impossible to fit an entire series into one movie, so their displeasure was inevitable. All I knew of the story was what I saw in the trailer.

The idea of a gunslinger intrigued me from the very beginning and King did an excellent job of melding a future world and our current world together to create a gripping narrative.

One of the most striking aspects of the story was the prayer repeated by the gunslinger, Roland Deschain played by Idris Elba. It goes like this:

”I do not aim with my hand. He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye. I do not shoot with my hand. He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind. I do not kill with my gun. He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.”

In regard to this story, what does it mean to “forget the face of your father”?

Roland’s father taught him what he knows about being a gunslinger. He walks in his father’s footsteps in that respect, fighting good and evil with the gifts handed down to him. If Roland “forgets the face of his father,” he has strayed from the path set before him and is in danger of using those gifts to kill for his own gain. What restrains Roland and helps him to channel his supernatural abilities to protect others is the memory of his father and all that he taught him about the difference between good and evil.

Spoilers are coming, so don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens in the movie.

Each of the characters lose loved ones throughout the film. Jake loses his mother and stepfather, Roland loses his father, and other good people are killed in cold blood by the Man in Black. Roland is the last gunslinger left after his father dies, and his inward struggle is apparent throughout the film. He is unsure whether or not to keep pursuing the Man in Black or to just give up and let the world end in fire, which means handing over the fate of humanity to the darkness that is held at bay beyond the borders surrounding the Dark Tower.

But when confronted with Jake and his “seer” gifts, Roland is unable to disengage and fade into the background like every legend that has gone before him.

Roland is there when Jake realizes the Man in Black has murdered his mother. He is the one who tells him to channel the pain through his body so that he can deal with it like a man. Jake obeys Roland and is able to move forward and help save the world from annihilation.

In the next moving scene, Roland gives Jake one of his handguns, and as they repeat the gunslinger’s prayer together, Jake learns how to “aim with his heart” at a row of cans on a shelf. With the last bullet, the boy hits a can dead center, and we see a major development in his character at that precise moment.

It was not so much a touching scene, watching the powerful figure of the gunslinger show the young boy how to harness his pain and use it for good, but an interesting picture of manhood.

Both Roland and Jake are now without father figures, and their individual struggles have brought them together for a common mission: to kill the Man in Black.

Jake’s father was a New York City firefighter who died in a burning building a few years before. He grieves the loss of his father deeply, and he unknowingly projects his need for that figure onto Roland. In turn, Roland begins to see Jake as his own son and teaches him all that he knows about being a gunslinger. He commends Jake for being brave and for his quick thinking abilities when they are attacked by a demon in the forest. That is something only a father figure would do in the circumstances.

As the story progresses, Roland comes to understand Jake’s role in the fight for good and the important part the young boy has played in his own life. Both characters fill a hole in the others’ heart.

At the end of the story, Roland and Jake find themselves on the streets of New York City, eating hot dogs and deciding where their separate paths will take them. Roland suggests to Jake that he come back with him through the portal because “There is nothing left for you here,” to which Jake readily agrees. His new leader/father calls him a gunslinger, and they enter the portal and go back into the other world together.

Needless to say, I hope a second installment is in the works because I enjoyed the film very much.

The movie only lasted an hour and a half, and the content suggests that there is much more to the story than can fit into such a short time period. There were moments it seemed rushed, as if there were things that could have been developed more, but overall I enjoyed the film. It is definitely not for children, but the scary scenes and characters were not as scary as the vile Orcs in the Lord of the Rings movies. I recommend this film to adults looking for some escapism that doesn’t involve any sex scenes or other negative elements.

The relationship between Roland and Jake is what makes the story worth investing in, and viewers will walk away thinking about that relationship and the positive elements more than they will be thinking about the “horror” that made Stephen King famous.