Bram Stoker's Dracula

John Harker's character is brought back to life. He has been in the film adaptions but not as the same character in the novel, only by name. Mina and Lucy no longer suffer switched identity crisises. Professor Van Helsing actually feels like Van Helsing. Anthony Hopkins captures his character the best since Peter Cushing in the Hammer series of Dracula. And of course there is Dracula played by Gary Oldman. One thing I must get out of the way is Christopher Lee will always be the best actor to ever play Dracula on the screen in my mind. His expressions and appearence, the man truly resembles the perfect Bram Stroker image of the vampire. It may seem director Francis Ford Copola decides to apply make-up on his vision of Dracula to make him look more horrifying. That was my initial reaction and at first thought it was cheap way of making him scary. However it does play out to a completely different purpose and even though Gary Oldman does not resemble our image of the Count he definitely delivers a great performance which has us feeling for the character of Dracula more then anything else. I probably never say this between novels and movies but read the book and see it captured perfectly on screen because Bram Strokers vision has finally truly become alive.