Anybody lucky enough to have witnessed Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant last year will have been reintroduced to a wonderful thing lacking on the silver screen of late. That thing is Ridiculous Cage. Not for a second would we disparage old Nic as just a foolish performing monkey, the guy certainly can act (see Leaving Las Vegas,Adaptation and many more), but he does have a penchant for picking faintly laughable roles and running with them. In doing so he can turn annoying tosh into enjoyable tosh at the flick of a eyebrow via some Brian Blessed worthy larynx gymnastics. That he doesn’t is just one reason why Season of the Witch could already go down as one of the worst films of 2011.
We open on a good old fashioned witch hanging. For approximately two minutes the audience is left with the tantalising question that should be at the heart of all good witch-hunt movies, “Are there really pointy hatted, black cat owning, broom botherers or are the bad people killing innocent women?” Any semblance of doubt is removed as a stereotypical hag rises from her drowning to eat a priests face. With subtlety and suspense out of the window we join Nic Cage in the Crusades in half an hour of what feels like a poor first draft of the already poor Kingdom Of Heaven. Mercifully it’s not long before Nic has been tasked with ferrying a witch (or is she!?) a few towns over, complete with, of course, his very own band of clichés.
If you’re wondering at this point how Nic’s English accent holds up, fear not. He doesn’t even try one. Instead we’re faced with the Yankiest Crusader since Robin of Notting-Ham met Mr. Freeman in 1991. If that fails to raise your heckles just wait until the supporting characters open their mouths. Having only just got used to hearing a Chicago accent emanate from Stephen Graham’s mouth in Boardwalk Empire it seems the wind has changed and his voice will stay like that forever. No other reason can be given for why a British Actor, playing a British character in the 14th Century would speak with an American twang. The wavering of Nathan from Misfits accent from Irish to English to God knows where else, just reiterates further that nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to anything in this production.
It’s been a full decade since Gladiator and LOTR redefined battle scenes and as we enter 2011 filmmakers the world over are more than happy to continue copying rather than attempting something new. Thus a mix of bluescreen and handheld fights and every other typical seen it all before way to stab someone with a pointy thing flicks across the screen with the urgency of a tortoise on Ketamine. By the time Nic gets round to being angry (well over an hour into the film) all hopes of Season of the Witch being ‘good for a laugh’ will have gone the way of a nasty bout of the plague.
As the credits roll it’ll be a tough call to what’s less enjoyable.
Ah Kevin Costner. Those were the salad days.
Comment by Matthew Benjamin Smith Esq. — January 11, 2011 @ 3:51 am