Review: 'The Shadow' is inept movie retelling of classic radio show

The Shadow   PG 13  

            Russell Mulcahy's adaptation of the 30s radio show hero, The Shadow, is a period piece set in the 1930s. Alec Baldwin tries his best not to be a clone of Warren Bearty's Dick Tracy, while keeping the action on the right side of camp. Ian McKellen is in it. John Lone plays an Asian evil mastermind. Then unknown Penelope Ann Miller plays the girl. The evil Shiwan Khan holds the nation for ransom or he will blow up New York with a shiny giant ball timer. At times, the mystifying powers and illusions are a bit ridiculous, but it works. The bad guy even makes a building vanish into thin air. Reinventing the radio and comics superhero of the radio generation for their grandchildren seems at times forced. The radio dramas never made it well when TV was born in the 1950s, so by 1994, there was little or nothing new about him. Scant revisionist comics weren't enough. After all, kids who were born in 1980 would have been 14 and unaware of the Shadow at all, having grown up to MTV and hundreds of other comics and heroes. 
Review by Adam Browne