Movie Review: Winter's Tale (2014)
“Winter’s Tale” is a really, really weird movie. It wastes a great cast and beautiful cinematography to tell one of the strangest and dumbest fantasy stories ever put on screen. I’m not even sure who to be angry with; director Akiva Goldsman for making this mess, or author Mark Helprin for writing the original story to begin with.
I’m honestly not entirely sure I even fully understood what the hell was happening, so please, bare with me as I try to make sense of it all. The story revolves around Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), a burglar living in 1916 New York, who falls in love with the beautiful Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), a young woman with only a few months left to live. Peter is simultaneously being tracked down by his old boss Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), who has a score to settle. When Beverly dies and Peter gets thrown off a bridge, he finds himself in present-day New York with no memory of who he was. Peter has been kept alive for some reason, and it’s up to him to figure out why. The story involves time travel, reincarnation, a magical flying horse who’s actually a dog, angels, and demons. In short, it makes no sense.
Honestly, story and dialogue aside, this is a pretty well produced film. The cinematography can look pretty good at times, and except for some pretty shoddy green screen, the effects work in service of the (sigh) story. The sets can be really beautiful and detailed as well, which again is such a huge shame to see them wasted on this.
The performances are mostly good, and I say mostly because Russell Crowe is awful, and I mean awful. He’s way too over-the-top, and his accent is all over the place. It just doesn’t doesn’t work. Leads Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay actually do a really good job; I just wish they were in a different movie. Jennifer Connelly is fine as a present-day journalist who helps out Peter Lake, but she ultimately doesn’t have much to do. Will Smith also has a small role as Lucifer, but he was more like Morpheus than the devil, and the performance was pretty bland.
The Verdict:
Although it boasts a mostly game cast and some impressive production values, “Winter’s Tale” is just too absurd and muddled to work as a romantic fairytale. I laughed quite a bit, so I can at least say I enjoyed it more than “Endless Love.”
Numerical Score: 3.5/10
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