Review of Winter's Tale (2014) by Tom S — 12 Mar 2014

Swanner: Since this week is Valentine's Day the studio's are releasing romantic movies. Brian went to see About Last Night and I got stuck seeing Winter's Tale. It's a romantic drama that includes magic, miracles, demons and a flying horse. Now that I know Brian and most of our audience has moved on to our review of Robocop let me tell you more about this very odd movie. Colin Farrell plays Peter Lake , an orphan that grew up on the streets of New York in the late 1800's. Now 1915, Farrell has left the employ of Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), a demon (yes I know) who gathers young men to do his evil, Peter Lake thinks he can escape Pearly. Everyone knows Pearly doesn't let anyone leave his employ and will spend over 100 year tracking him down (doesn't that sound familiar). Peter meets Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), a young girl with consumption, who he falls instantly in love with and stays with her till her end. Beverly believes in magic and miracles and well you can see where this is going.

The romance itself was working for me. Peter and Beverly have a lovely chemistry so that aspect of the film worked. It's the Crowe part. The demon has to check in with the devil (Will Smith) and those scenes felt like they were plucked from another source and have nothing to do with this story. We have the good vs evil scene at the end which was just as out of place as the whole demon portion to begin with. Since Crowe plays a large part of the second half of the film, like in Les Miz, Crowes character stays focused on revenge and that will always bring him down. The film is shot very well even though the special effects looked a bit TV movie. My favorite part of the film without question is the score by Rupert Gregson-Williams and Hans Zimmer. It stirs the soul and draws you in to the romance.

Director/writer Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) must have called in a lot favors casting the movie. Having worked with Crowe, Smith and Jennifer Connelly from earlier projects. Connelly plays a throwaway character in the last 30 minutes and should have told Goldsman no when he asked. Maybe the Mark Helprin's novel was too much to put on film because Goldsman does usually have this problem with his scripts. Goldsman is making his feature film directing debut with this film and I'm sure that's where the problems lay. If you're planning on seeing a movie this Valentine let me suggest reading through our other reviews and wait to see this one on cable next year.

Swanner: * (for the musical score).