Review: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

When Snow White and the Huntsman had a modicum of financial success, you knew it wouldn’t be the last time we’d see Hollywood dip their toes into the pages of children’s literature in search of another tale that could be spun into a commercially viable action narrative geared towards an adult audience; hence the production and theatrical release of Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.  That the movie was released in January is a telling sign of how the execs at Paramount felt about the film, but it still managed to pull in a respectable $223M worldwide.  But does that mean Hansel & Gretel is actually a good movie?  Not necessarily.   

The movie kicks off by retelling the classic tale of Hansel and Gretel and using it as the origin story for the witch hunting adult version of the siblings (played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton) we are introduced to onscreen.  The plot finds Hansel and Gretel hired by a village to stop a group of witches from kidnapping their children, but as the duo investigate the occurrences, Hansel and Gretel uncover a deeper more nefarious plot that may ultimately shed some light on their long lost family.

So it’s not the absolute worst premise, but what little hope there might be is critically damaged by some curious choices on the part of the creative team.  Unlike Snow White and the Huntsman, the tone of this film makes you feel like no one from top to bottom is taking this movie seriously.  There’s always a tongue-in-cheek/ wink wink vibe that gives the impression that the entire production is one inside joke, and Jeremy Renner’s natural inclination towards wry sarcastic delivery only fans these flames.  As a result, the movie feels off kilter, unbalanced, and makes it a difficult narrative to digest.  It’s like eating food during a blind taste test; you’re hesitant and distracted because you’re not really sure what they are feeding you.

Where this film truly falters though is in its failure to get you to invest in the characters.  Orphaned, traumatized, always venturing perilously close to death, and yet it is near impossible to care for the protagonists and their cohorts in the least.  The blame for this has to falls on the shoulders of director Tommy Wirkola and his inability to flesh out the characters and build tension and suspense into the plot.  Besides getting the film in the can on budget, ensuring those two elements were probably his primary points of emphasis, so it’s hard to view his work as anything but a failure.

Jeremy Renner does him absolutely no favors as Hansel.  Renner is very good in certain roles, but I don’t think he is the fountain of acting talent that many claim him to be.  He’s a one-gear actor limited range and this role resides far outside his wheelhouse.  His Hansel costume looked more suitable for a bad SNL and rendered him every bit the fish out of water that Mila Kunis seemed in Oz The Great and Powerful.  While he does provide the occasional entertaining moment, his work for the most part feels clunky and awkward.

If there is a redeeming quality for this movie it has to be Gemma Arterton as Gretel.  She may not be significantly more successful than Renner at disappearing into her character, but she does perform most of the heavy lifting in regards to advancing the plot and does so with an impressive screen presence.  I am guessing that Arterton could read the pages of the phone book and make it sound like a canonical piece of literature with her voice inflection and accent.  It’s a quality that is not lost on the viewer despite the morass of incidental nonsense taking place on the big screen.

As for the rest of the cast, Famke Janssen reprises the role of Jean Gray from X-Men: The Last Stand only this time she is supposed to supposed to be Muriel, a wicked witch.  Unfortunately, the performance is as weak this time out as it was six years ago in the Brett Ratner directed fiasco.  Peter Stormare as Sheriff Berringer also recycles the past as he delivers the exact same performance that he has put forth in last ten movies.  Sooner or later someone is going to figure out that they can just edit his past performances into each subsequent movie and save him the trouble of showing up to the set.

So what you have then in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a movie with a soft of premise, poor directing, uninspired acting, and moderately entertaining action scenes – all of which collectively induce apathy.  I don’t think the movie is a complete write-off as there is just enough to keep you occupied on an extremely slow night, but in order to appreciate this film, you will have to approach it with a tongue-in-cheek attitude and very low expectations. It’s not a purchase or a rental and maybe not even a pay cable channel movie.  My best suggestion is to forget about it until that one day you randomly happen upon it while flipping the channels.  Those conditions probably give you the best chance of enjoying this film.   Under any other circumstances, it is probably a “no.”

Standout Performance: Gemma Arterton.  She’s not the best actress of her generation and at times she may not even seem like a very good one, but she has an indefinable screen presence – something sorely lacking in today’s cinema.

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Review: The Last Stand

If you enrolled in the kind of film school that runs advertisements on the inside of a match book and took a class called Action Films 101, then The Last Stand starring Arnold Schwarzenegger would be your first case study.  The latest in a recent trend of movies featuring a way-over-the-hill action star, The Last Stand is a paint-by-numbers approach to adrenaline movie making with very few pretensions and some tongue-in-cheek self-awareness that manages to moderately entertain without really telling much of a story.  But then when was the last time anyone watched a Schwarzenegger vehicle and cared about the story.  Terminator 2?

The happenings of this film center upon an event that is about to occur - drug lord Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) breaking out of federal custody and making a run for the border.  Standing in the way of he and his goons are a small town Sheriff (Arnold Schwarzenegger), his deputies, and some townies.  Each has his/her own micro backstory, which serves as some semblance of a plot, but the film is entirely about the skirmish that is brewing - noting more and nothing less.

What Went Right:

The Action.  The scope of the movie is small, but the action sequences still deliver what you would expect from the setup - chase scenes, gunplay, and fisticuffs.  There’s nothing groundbreaking about the way these scenes are framed, but the visuals are clean and give the actors the opportunity to be actively present in the shots – one of the major advantages to avoiding the perils of an unsteady cam.

The Humor.  While no one will mistake this for an episode of Seinfeld, there is a self-awareness with this film (that Arnold is practically calcifying before your very eyes), which allows the film and its cast to poke fun at itself. Luis Guzman and Johnny Knoxville  do a nice job of adding non-AARP levity to the proceedings, ensuring that at no time does it feel like director Jee-woon Kim is taking the source material too serious.

What Went Wrong:

The Cast.  We know who Schwarzenegger is as an actor so it feels absurd to judge his performance, especially since they are all exactly the same.  The rest of the cast, however, gets no such pass.  Forest Whitaker is too good an actor to accept roles as the third star in a mindless action flick only to completely disappear.  And Jaimie Alexander fails to show the same charisma that made her a fan favorite in Thor.  Genesis Rodriguez, Rodrigo Santoro, Peter Stomare, and the rest of the cast – from top to bottom each delivers one dimensional performances that are substandard even for a movie of this ilk.

The Writing.  Jee-Woon Kim is a good director who knows how to frame a shot and tell a story, but unfortunately writer Andrew Knauer has not given him much to work with.  The bread and butter of this movie is its action, but that doesn’t mean some ink can’t be shed for the purpose of fleshing out the characters.  Without those details, it is nearly impossible to become invested in the peril unfolding onscreen.

The Final Verdict:

At best this is a rental, especially if you are an action movie enthusiast but for those who are more casual about their movie preferences, this is an FX, TNT, USA movie all the way.  So much of what goes on is completely forgettable and will be forgotten about fifteen minutes after you turn off the television, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an adequate way to pass a bit of spare time – unless you are one of those people who owns all of Nicholas Sparks’ books, in which case you will most likely loathe everything about this flick.  The choice then is yours.

Standout Performance: Zach Gilford.  For those Friday Night Lights fans out there, it was nice to see Matt Saracen onscreen again.

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Review: Get the Gringo

Ever notice what happens when a great professional athlete hangs around the game too long?  The experience of watching him/her perform as mere shadows of their former selves (and in some cases even worse) makes you forget how good they used to be at their craft.  This happened with Willie Mays; it happened with Carl Yastrzemski, and more recently with Shaquille O’Neal.  It’s only when you see their greatest hits highlight reel during one of those lifetime achievement moments that you remember their former greatness.  Sadly, I realized that this phenomenon is precisely what happened to Mel Gibson as I watched the movie Get the Gringo. 

I made a conscious decision to avoid Mel Gibson movies when he started to become the whipping boy for TMZ and the various dirt rags.  For an abundance of reasons, his life was in a state of flux and the tabloid journalist could smell the blood in the water.  He had long since stopped churning out Oscar nominated movies, but this kind of personal baggage would most assuredly mark the beginning of the end.  Sadly, I broke my stance to watch Get the Gringo and found that not only were the days of Braveheart and Lethal Weapon long gone, but also that Gibson’s current work was on the fast track to the $2.99 DVD bin at Walmart.  Simply put, Get the Gringo is that bad.

The plot follows Gibson’s character Driver, a serial criminal who is sent to a Mexican prison for robbery.  While in this small town that doubles as a jail, Gibson befriends a young boy and his mother both of whom live in the commune and aid him in navigating the unfriendly waters.  The boy is of particular interest to the crime boss who runs the joint because of his rare blood type and it is up to Gibson to save the boy, his mother, and find a way to break out of the prison.

Despite the stench that emanates from this film, there are a few things that do work a bit.  It is gritty and violent and every once in a while you see flashes of the old Gibson who is both sharp witted and menacing all at the same time.  But the plot is far-fetched and its mechanisms so over-to-top that the proceedings feel utterly cheesy.  The cast does little to remedy this, as most of the performances feel like the acting equivalent of painting-by-numbers.  Thus it is difficult to empathize with any of the major players so ultimately you feel as though you are watching portraits of random violence against the backdrop of a non-descript corrupt Mexican prison.

As I mentioned before, Mel Gibson truly is a shadow of his former self onscreen.  The sharp wit, the charisma, and the engaging persona have been replaced by a tired weathered delivery.  He motions across the screen like a punch drunk boxer who has endured a few rounds too many.  Sure ,in a lot of ways his performance is hindered by the poor screenplay for which he only has himself to blame (since he wrote it), but in his salad days, Gibson could take a mediocre script like Lethal Weapon 4 and make it great.

I don’t recommend this movie to the casual movie fan.  There are too many other titles in the subgenre that is the jailhouse narrative to settle for this brand of bad and there is very little entertainment value to be found in this film.  As for those ardent fans of Mel Gibson who watched everything from Mad Max to What Women Want, I would even more strongly suggest that you avoid this movie.  It can only tarnish your memories of what was once an A+ list acting/directing career.  Here’s hoping that Gibson can put his demons to rest, that Hollywood can forgive his transgressions, and that he can find that golden touch again.

Standout Performance: Peter Stormare.  He doesn’t get much screen time and his work always borders on campy, but the guy really knows how to play a greasy sleaze bag.  

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Review: Lockout

Here’s the deal with a project like Lockout.  With some decent script rewrites, a director with an eye for visual flair and a special effects budget to match, as well as an A-list talent attached to this project, what you might have on your hands is a summer tent-pole.  And without these elements, what you’re left with is a few vaguely familiar faces going through the motions in a stale forgettable film that barely warrants a short theatrical run in January.  Given that the only thing you might remember about this movie is a cleverly edited trailer, I am going to leave it to you to figure out which of the two aforementioned avenues the creative team took in making this movie.

Honestly, Lockout is the kind of script that doesn’t really get shot anymore.  It feels like a leftover project from the days when studios would green-light almost anything knowing that it would turn a profit downstream on the Home Entertainment (DVD) side of the business.  Still, Director James Mather and Producer Luc Besson seem at ease with the knowledge that clearly this is a B-level movie that will not even be memorable enough to be panned for its mediocrity.  At times they seemingly allow the cast to revel in this awareness.

As for the plot of Lockout, it is very straightforward.  Guy Pearce’s Snow has been set up for a crime he has not committed and in the interest of completing his mission and clearing his name, he agrees to rescue the first daughter from a super maximum-security penitentiary.  The catch is that his jailhouse resides in orbit around the earth.

There’s not a whole lot of meat on the bones of this film to truly disect.  Guy Pearce is a very good actor who has made a few very poor film choices (of late) but I am still trying to figure out if his performance in this film is a stroke of genius or just a matter of coincidence.  Throughout the film, Pearce acts like he does not care in the least about all that is going on, but ironically, his character is required to act like he (wait for it) does not care in the least about all that is going on around him.  Thus, as he spits out painfully contrived dialogue, I am left to wonder if his lack of conviction is born from disdain for the poorly written script or if he is in actuality playing things straight.  I will say that the mix of apathy and really cheesey dialogue makes Pearce’s Snow the only remotely entertaining aspect of the movie.

As for the rest of the film, it is a disaster.  The movie is littered with people you vaguely recognize cast in roles that are similar to others that they’ve played in the past.  So you can’t help but feel like you are watching a series of recycled performances.  Peter Stormare, Lennie James, Peter Hudson, and Vincent Regan clearly are not worried about being typecast.  And as for Maggie Grace, there is nothing about her performance that feels genuine and the moment she first appears in the film, it becomes apparent that her only purpose will be to trade barbs with Pearce’s Snow in a futile attempt to drum up some sexual chemistry.

Sadly there are no special effects or clever twists that can rescue this film and almost zero entertainment value to be found between the opening and closing credits.  I would tell you to avoid this movie at all cost, but I suspect that the film is so inconsequential and forgettable that the likelihood that a project like this is actually on your radar is nil.  If you’re looking for Guy Pearce to turn things around, then there is hope.  He is set to appear opposite Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man 3 due out next summer.

Standout Performance: Guy Pearce...maybe.

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