Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) - Movie Review

If only the Will Ferrell connection could have morphed this into Hansel & Gretel: Bitch Hunter, then we really would have been onto something.

I'm referring to the 30 Rock "Bitch Hunter" joke, which featured Will Ferrell.  If you're wondering where the hell I'm going with this, I was surprised to see in the opening credits that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay co-produced Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. This immediately perked me up, thinking their involvement signaled that maybe I was in for a treat.  You see the names McKay and Ferrell on a movie and you think comedy, right?  Unfortunately, that's not what we got here.

The good thing I'll say for Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is that is doesn't waste much time (it's not even 90 minutes) or have a particularly complex plot.  After a brief prologue that's basically a recap of the original folk tale, we fast forward several years later, and Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are all grown up.  The siblings have become a well known duo of witch hunters, who are hired by the mayor of a small town to investigate the kidnapping of several of the town's children by witches. Eventually they cross paths with the dark witch Muriel (Famke Janssen), who need the children to complete a ritual involving the upcoming Blood Moon.  The ritual will give the witches immunity to fire, which is still the best way to kill a witch, so Hansel and Gretel can't let this happen.

Despite being famous for witch hunting and supposedly having a lot of experience, Hansel and Gretel seem pretty bad at it throughout the film.  They setup traps that are easily gotten out of, don't fare very well in hand-to-hand combat, and haven't learned that you should lead a target when shooting at something that's moving.  Seriously, you see that happen at least three times in the movie.  Awareness of their location wasn't a strength of theirs either, as they are surprised to find the town they are investigating is a stone's throw from the house they grew up in.  Their lack of skill is made up for by having a modern-day arsenal of high powered weapons at their disposal.  This was another thing that kind of distracted me at first, but then I wrote it off as a stylistic choice.  I had to remind myself that these stories are fantasies, so if they want to put their own spin on it and add to the mythology, then go for it.  It's more forgivable than something like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which tries to add mythology and fantasy around real events and people.

The main problem with H&S:WH is that it's pretty clear they couldn't decide what kind of film they were trying to make. It was originally scheduled to be released in March of 2012, so when you see an almost year long delay, you think reshoots and lots of edits trying to find something that worked.  Opens with more of a horror feel, but there's never a scary moment in the film. Then, one of the first lines of dialog Gretel has she drops the 'F bomb', and it totally took me out of the film.  It made me think of Your Highness, which had a lot of profanity for no good reason other than to be vulgar to get a cheap laugh. There's even a nude scene that felt out of place.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with swearing or nudity, but if they don't add anything to the film, then it's kind of pointless.  It's simply not in the same league as more recent horror-comedies like Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, Zombieland or Cabin in the Woods.

It's also much gorier than I expected.  Again, it didn't seem they quite knew how they should use the gore though.  There's a great scene involving a troll that looked like Tito Ortiz (seriously though it was Derek Mears in a troll suit), but it's over in a flash and the movie doesn't surprise you like that again.  There's a mix of practical effects and CG effects, but you don't need to have a trained eye to tell the difference and know that the practical stuff worked better.  I didn't bother with seeing this in 3D, and while it was shot in 3D (and also available in IMAX), I didn't see anything about the visuals that 3D would have improved.

Poor Jeremy Renner.  After The Hurt Locker and then The Town, he seemed poised for super stardom, but then he ended up playing the least interesting superhero in The Avengers (something even he's expressed irritation over), a lackluster Bourne movie, and now this.  It's the same with Gemma Arterton.  I thought she'd be a bigger deal by now, but it just hasn't gone that way yet.  I really hope they are able to find some films that match the level of their talent.  I felt like both of them were trying here, and at times I thought they had good chemistry together, but the material really let them down.

It has a decent supporting cast that's also wasted.  Famke Janssen spends the majority of the film in unrecognizable makeup, and there's not much memorable about the role otherwise.  Peter Stormare is the town sheriff, and plays a weak bad guy that was simply a lazy character stereotype.  Thomas Mann has a small role as a huge fan/groupie of Hansel and Gretel, but while you can tell the character was meant to be comic relief, it just wasn't written that way.

Director Tommy Wirkola, who co-wrote this with Dante Harper, showed a lot of promise back in 2008 with Dead Snow.  Instead of building on that, he took a step back here with an unfunny script, and a story that's all over the place.  The thing that really made me notice this the most was that they introduce the fact that Hansel needs to take a shot every few hours or otherwise he spazzes out.  You think it might be some cool thing about how he's suppressing some witch disease or something like that, but then he says it's because he ate too much candy as a kid and now has a sugar disease.  Diabetes?  Really?  Why was this in the film?  To increase awareness of diabetes, but then never call it diabetes?  I'm surprised they didn't have a scene of Gretel massaging her breast and complaining about a lump.  Anyway, I think they should have totally gone wild with the gore, and then got someone to punch up the script.  The movie is treated way too seriously, and it should have gone for camp.  That's why I was so surprised to see Adam McKay and Will Ferrell as co-producers.  I figured they would have noticed that the film needed a lot more humor, and either added it themselves or brought in another writer to do so.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is an inconsistent mixed bag that never figures out what kind of movie it wants to be.  It wastes the few good things it had going for it with flat dialog that desperately needed a huge infusion of humor.  I really wanted to have more fun with the film than I did.  I can only recommend this as a rental.

2 (out of 5) Death Stars

The Last Stand (2013) - Movie Review

He's back, and he's really, really old!

Former Governor of California tries his stab at acting...wait a second, let me try this again.  Former action star, turned Governor, returns to the genre that made him famous in The Last Stand.  I have to admit that I was more than a little geeked up to see The Last Stand.  Come on, it's Arnold!  This guy was my idol for a large portion of my youth, and I still go back through his older films on a fairly regular basis.  I don't think I'm alone in saying it's exciting to see him back on the big screen.

Schwarzenegger plays Ray Owens, the sheriff of the small border town of Sommerton Junction, AZ.  He's a former LA cop, which was the movie's way of telling you that he must have been a badass before coming to AZ for a quieter life.  Some quick research showed that there is no actual Summerton Junction in Arizona, but there is a Somerton that's close to the border, so I'm not sure why they didn't just go with that.  Anyway, Sheriff Owens is enjoying a simple day with the goofy locals, like Johnny Knoxville. We learn a little about his deputies, and they appear inept for the most part.  Then again, if Luis Guzmán is one of your deputies, then you're not exactly working with the best of the best.  One wants to transfer because he wants more excitement (so you know he'll be the first to die), and his female deputy had a relationship with the guy that's currently locked up in their lone jail cell.  Whatever, none of it is really important.  Arnold notices a few guys that didn't look right to him (one of which was played by Peter Stormare), and they investigate.

We then meet FBI Agent Bannister (Forest Whitaker) who's overseeing the transfer of a drug kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega).  It takes almost no time before this transfer is hijacked by various henchmen and Cortez escapes in a fancy, modified sports car.  He's about as generic a bad guy as they come, and you never feel any threat from the guy at all.  He doesn't even carry a gun.  He just drives and offers people large sums of money as bribes.  Yet we're reminded that he's worse than Pablo Escobar, so we're supposed to be scared, I guess.

Speaking of the getaway car, they go out of their way to tell you it can go upwards of 200 mph and that it can outrun a helicopter, which is why they are driving rather than just fly over the border.  But in the very next scene, a helicopter is on the tail of the car and not having any trouble keeping up.  So how does he lose the helicopter?  Does he floor the one-of-a-kind sports car, leaving the helicopter in it's wake?  No, he slams on his breaks and turns his lights off, so the copter can't find them again on the dark, unlit road.  It's a good thing they spent all that time telling us how fast that car was, especially when they don't use that speed in the one situation where it would be useful.  This might be the kind of movie that will bug car enthusiasts, as there are lots of things done that don't make a lot of sense.  You see driving on the wrong side of the road against traffic for no real reason, and there's a 180 that transitions into the car speeding in reverse.  I've always wondered why such an abrupt transition in speed and direction never seems to hurt the car.  Also, don't movie guys know that cars can only go so fast in reverse?  There's no advantage to speeding in reverse, and we see it all too often in movies simply because it's cool looking.  There are some entertaining car chases though, so it's not all bad.  It's just the type of stuff I'm noticing more and more.

This actually has a pretty decent supporting cast, but there's nothing to any of the characters, which seemed like kind of a waste.  Johnny Knoxville isn't in the movie as much as the trailer would have you believe (which is probably a good thing), and Luis Guzmán didn't get many opportunities to provide the kind of comic relief we're used to seeing from him.  Sif from Thor (Jaimie Alexander) plays the only capable deputy at Arnold's disposal, but while there are flashes where you think she might get to be more of a badass, it doesn't play out that way.  Maybe we'll get to see more of her in Thor: The Dark World.  The movie also wastes Genesis Rodriguez as a FBI agent that's kidnapped by Cortez.  I'm anxiously awaiting the film that uses her...um, assets...to their fullest.

The one stand out was Peter Stormare.  If you've been following his career, then you know he either plays a bad guy, a weird guy, or a weird, bad guy.  Here he plays a weird bad guy, and even adopts a bad southern accent (he's Swedish).  He seemed to be having fun with the role though, and managed to keep his accent, which is more than I can say for the Rodrigo Santoro, who played Frank.  We first hear him speaking with a forced sounding American accent (he's from Brazil), as we learn that he's an ex-Marine (they even put a Semper Fi tattoo on his forearm, so we wouldn't be confused about that).  He's some kind of screwup though, as he's in jail for some reason we never learn.  He yells at Sif early on, and his real accent bleeds through. From that point, it's like he said screw it and didn't bother hiding it anymore.

Then again, I'm complaining about realistic accents in a movie that stars a large Austrian man, who's never had the best command of the English language, playing the sheriff of a small town in Arizona.

There's not a lot of attention to detail, which is usually hard for me to overlook.  I'd fault director Jee-woon Kim for this, but he seemed to understand he wasn't making a smart movie here, and did a good job of making the kind of action film we've come to expect form Arnold.  The movie is paced well and when the action gets going, it's actually pretty fun.  The violence is sprinkled with humor, so you never take it too seriously and just go with it.

Arnold can still carry a movie, but I'd like to see him change pace a little.  There's the inevitable showdown at the end of the film, and I couldn't help but thinking that he looked like a top-heavy action figure that you just managed to finally balance, but could tip over for any reason.  I was curious to see how they'd edit the fight to cover for the fact that he's a 65-year-old man that's lost several steps, and doesn't have that same physicality that made him famous.  They actually did a good job with that final fight scene, and it kind of reminded me more of and old warrior or boxer that may not have his speed, but that power is still there when he needs it.

Despite everything I just said, I still had fun with The Last Stand.  At it's heart it's really no different from any other Schwarzenegger film, and it has all the things we love about them:  cheesy one-liners, silly humor, lots of guns and violence, and a simple story.  If that's your cup of tea (Arnold would say you need to drink beer), then I think you'll enjoy The Last Stand.

3 (out of 5) Death Stars