|
Season of the Witch
| Released |
7 January 2011 |
| Director |
Dominic Sena |
Starring
|
Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Robert Sheehan, Claire Foy |
| Writer(s) |
Bragi Schut |
| Producer(s) |
Alex Gartner, Charles Roven |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
119 minutes |
| Genre |
Adventure, drama, fantasy |
| Rating |
15A |
|
|
Bring out your crap!
In the future, film historians will examine the career of Nicolas Cage like archaeologists. They will find some gems like Leaving Las Vegas, Red Rock West, Raising Arizona and Adaptation, but to find them, they’ll have to shuffle through an awful lot of crap. Having briefly flickered back into critical favour with his wonderfully deranged turns in Kick-Ass and Bad Lieutenant, Cage is back to his day job of making awful blockbusters such as Ghost Rider, National Treasure and Gone in Sixty Seconds.
The director of that last stinker, Dominic Sena, is reunited with Cage on Season of the Witch. Cage plays a knight on the crusades who, along with his wisecracking sidekick Ron Perlman (Hell-Boy himself), merrily murders Muslims for years while drinking and whoring at night. The pair do this in American accents, somewhat strangely considering that country was not discovered for another two hundred years or so.
However after a decade or so of this feckless genocide, Cage kills a woman by accident and then realises that all this killing is wrong……so very, very wrong! Deserting from the crusading armies, he and Perlman head for home, but find themselves in Styria in Austria. It may as well be called the land of funny accents though. Most have English accents like Stephen Campbell Moore, who plays a monk who spots the deserters and blackmails them in performing a special task. However some have ‘Noo Yawk’ accents like Stephen Graham (even though he’s an English actor) who plays a local rogue who’s persuaded to guide the knights on their task. Also along for the ride are Irish actor Robert Sheehan who has a kind of indistinguishable mid-Atlantic accent and Ulrich Thompson, a Danish actor, who speaks in an accent that Americans would call ‘European’.
This distinctly unmerry band are bound together to bring a girl suspected of being a witch (Claire Foy) to a monastery so she can be tried and punished. It is hoped that by doing this, it will lift the plague that has cursed the land. However, we are not sure if she is a genuine witch or an innocent victim of a tyrannical church that is out of control and Cage’s conscience is severely tested.
This is, of course, completely daft but who knows, it could be fun right? Well, it is to a point but only if you like watching, really, really bad movies. As a piece of truly terrible cinema, this is prime grade stuff. It fails on every level, the plot is confused nonsense, the script is leaden and dull and the performances are universally awful. Cage acts like he’s suffering from narcolepsy and could drop off at any minute. Perlman is usually good value but he just looks bored throughout, like he can’t wait to collect his cheque and get back to Sons of Anarchy. Sheehan, the little Irish pixie boy from Misfits, does his best with his hackneyed role but it’s a losing battle he can’t win. Stephen Graham, a fine character actor, actually looks quite relieved when he’s killed off halfway through. Worst of all are the special effects, which are so cheap and tacky that you’d actually see far better on Doctor Who!
This is spectacularly awful stuff and though the year is but young, it will no doubt feature in the many end of year “worst of” lists.
Think Monty Python and the Holy Grail played as a straight drama and you have an idea of how bad this is.
- Jim O’Connor |
