Forbidden Love -- `Dracula' Runs Out Of Juice

XX 1/2 "Bram Stoker's Dracula," with Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, from a script by James V. Hart. Aurora Village, City Center, Crossroads, Factoria, Gateway, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, Kent, Kirkland Parkplace, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza. "R" - Restricted, due to violence, nudity, language. --------------------------------------------------------------- During its savagely mythic, visually stunning first half hour, it seems as if Francis Ford Coppola's two-hour treatment of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel will outlive its industry nickname, "The Bonfire of the Vampires."

Looking more like a blend of "Excalibur" and "Kagemusha" than a conventional neck-biting saga, the opening scenes of love, war, suicide and soul-damning blasphemy in 15th-century Romania are fiercely evocative.

They may not be exactly what Stoker had in mind, but they do establish his anti-Christ theme more vividly than any previous movie about the vampire count. It's difficult not to get the point when Dracula the 15th-century warrior (Gary Oldman) damns the Church, crosses start bleeding and, later on, crucifixes are condemned as "trinkets of deceit" and Dracula starts quoting the dying Christ.

But as the story moves to late-19th-century London and Transylvania, with the undead Dracula still around to pursue his lost 15th-century love (Winona Ryder plays the original and her 19th-century incarnation), the movie loses its conviction and narrative momentum and becomes an unsteady campfest. Coppola falls in love with the admittedly impressive camera tricks, visual effects and art direction (as he did before in "One From the Heart" and "Rumblefish"), loses interest in the story and leaves the actors at sea.

Although Oldman is effective in the early scenes, especially when he's terrorizing Jonathan Harker with little more than shadows, he lacks the scary carnal authority that Christopher Lee and Frank Langella brought to the role. Too many times he sounds like a Bela Lugosi impersonator. Taking a cue from Alan Rickman's over-the-top Sheriff of Nottingham in "Robin Hood," Anthony Hopkins hams it up as Dr. Van Helsing, going for the easy laughs and having a roaring good time at the expense of everyone else.

Keanu Reeves struggles with a British accent and the starched personality of Harker, while Ryder strains to invest her roles with the required passion. Tom Waits is suitably demented as Renfield and Sadie Frost brings an appropriate erotic charge to the role of Lucy, but Cary Elwes is a nonentity as her fiance, Richard E. Grant is equally ineffective as her failed suitor, and Bill Campbell gets most of the unintended laughs as an oafish American visitor.

In an effort to follow the book to the letter, James V. Hart's script clutters up the soundtrack with readings from Harker's journal and other writings. Earlier movies of "Dracula" have been criticized for following the 1927 stage version too closely, but using Stoker's literary device turns out to be just as ill-advised.

Before the movie's half over, it becomes abundantly clear that Coppola was the wrong director for this project, and that Hart, who transformed "Peter Pan" into "Hook" last year, is too self-conscious a myth-recycler. This "Dracula" lacks the narrative drive, the creepiness and the necessary brevity of the best previous film adaptations. Overblown and sinfully overlong at 123 minutes, it leaves you wanting much less.