I make no claim that Season of the Witch is a great film; it plainly isn’t. But it knows its business and carries it out dutifully. I personally enjoyed it, as I often do with Nicolas Cage titles: Con Air, Wicker Man, Next, Knowing and, recently, Drive Angry 3D. Many criticize that Cage has long since succumbed to sleepwalking through second-hand movies. I say he’s using his A-list star status far more liberally, without pretense, giving us matinee discount junkies an open buffet of B-entertainment. Find me an Oscar winner more pro bono than Nicolas Cage and I’ll find you an actor with a greater film legacy of awesomely bad hair. His latest here is a dumb movie that takes itself seriously, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You can’t enjoy these kinds of films when they’re self aware with parody. Well, you can, but not to the same effect; because with a lack of sincerity comes a lack of guilty indulgence.
Like a return to the pages of dime store horror comics and the films of Hammer and Roger Corman, Season of the Witch is laden with grim faced heroes who venture through wooded darkness and torch lit dungeon layer, racking steel against evil in all its ghoulish forms… with a touch of Tales from the Crypt and Howard’s Solomon Kane. This is no doubt a Saturday night (or afternoon at the local marquee) movie for boys, or men with boyish enthusiasms. I can almost picture it as an early ‘80 VHS incarnation (Paragon, Media, Vidmark – take your pick), with the smell of old, through-many-hands plastic and a smudged graphic illustration on the cover box.
The 14th century: After many years of bloody service in the name of God that eventually dwindles to the slaughtering of innocents, two knights of the Crusades, Behmen (Cage) and Felson (Ron Pearlman), rid themselves of the puritanical bullshit and head north for home, or wherever, as deserters. Somewhere amidst the vast of Eastern Europe they happen upon a kingdom-post ravaged by the Black Plague. In attempt to pass through unnoticed, the two men are identified by Behmen’s crested sword and imprisoned--to be executed. But the sickly Cardinal D'Ambroise (Christopher Lee, rounding said Hammer experience), with his plague rotting mug, summons the errant knights and tasks them with a pardoning quest to escort an accused black haired witch (Claire Foy), referred to simply as The Girl, to a remote monastery. There, she is to be tried by an elite order of monks and, if found guilty, executed by sacred ritual that will remedy the curse of the Plague. Accompanying them is a priest named Debelzaq (Stephen Campbell Moor), a local knight Eckhardt (Ulrich Thomsen), a swindler Hagamar (Stephen Graham), who knows the road and a young squire named Kay (Robert Sheehan).
The lean narrative follows our heroes over treacherous wilds, from one thrill to the next, as the crux of the story centers on whether or not The Girl can be trusted and whether or not Behmen will abide his oath to protect her and see to her a fair trial – an oath that grows more precarious as The Girl plays on the men’s fears and loyalties, saving the life of one while manipulating others to their end, sympathetic upfront but smirking slyly behind glances. This yields a surprisingly decent amount of dramatic tension on her end, aided largely by the actor involved. In her big screen debut, Clair Foy, seen mostly from behind bars, gets down patent her assorted looks of coy, deception and vulnerability, playing each card accordingly.
From Cage there is no speed we haven’t seen countless times over, but he trudges on like the soldier of cinema that he is, wearing the mournful brow and heavy conscious of Behmen’s faith-jaded character. In sidekick mode, Pearlman dishes out his usual gruff charm and dogged screen presence; where some actors have feathers in their cap, he has notches on his belt. Together, the two leads make of it a day’s work, delivering droll dialogue with comically flat accents and sharing an occasional nod, chuckle or relating gesture with genuine buddy chemistry. The rest of the supporting cast are broadly outlined in their characters but none-the-less earnest in their performances – the acting overall is about as good as a movie like this will allow.
From Cage there is no speed we haven’t seen countless times over, but he trudges on like the soldier of cinema that he is, wearing the mournful brow and heavy conscious of Behmen’s faith-jaded character. In sidekick mode, Pearlman dishes out his usual gruff charm and dogged screen presence; where some actors have feathers in their cap, he has notches on his belt. Together, the two leads make of it a day’s work, delivering droll dialogue with comically flat accents and sharing an occasional nod, chuckle or relating gesture with genuine buddy chemistry. The rest of the supporting cast are broadly outlined in their characters but none-the-less earnest in their performances – the acting overall is about as good as a movie like this will allow.
The last time director Dominic Sena teamed with Cage was for the Gone in 60 Seconds remake, which, along with Swordfish was some pretty obnoxious Hollywood hyperbole. Season of the Witch is a notably more subdued (and cheaper, with a mere $40 million price tag) bells and whistleless exercise in genre. Yet whatever failings attributed to the screenplay, the film does succeed with immersive settings and a moody medieval atmosphere. Between the locations used in Hungary , Austria and Croatia
My town has two movie theaters. One is a 14 auditorium complex newly furnished with XD digital super-screens and Real-D 3D projectors. The other is the older, smaller, bargain bin dive with sticky floors, tacky purple & green trimmings and film reels that snap, pop and crackle. It plays two-to-three month old new releases for a dollar…a dollar! That’s where I saw Season of the Witch, by myself, in a half-sized auditorium peppered with maybe four or five other lowly patrons sitting near the back. Cage hacked away at demon wolves and zombie monks. I ate Goobers. It was fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment