Season of the Witch is probably the best film that Dominic Sena has managed to do. That is not really high praise considering the quality of his previous work, consisting of dull, run of the mill, "action" films such as Swordfish and Gone in 60 Seconds, which is coincidently the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep watching it. Season of the Witch probably won't make you fall asleep, but by the time it gets to the end you will be probably be ready for bed.
The set up is that Nicolas Cage and Ron Pearlman play a couple of Knights, fighting in the crusades, who suddenly have an epiphany that slaughtering loads of innocent women and children probably isn't the most godly thing to do, so decide to walk away from their lifestyle as holy warriors in a rather aimless manner without any real plan what to do next. On the way to goodness knows where they decide to stop off at a city for some supplies for their trip, to wherever that may be, and then get rumbled as a pair of deserters. News spreads fast in these lands. After being thrown in jail for a while they get roped into transporting a suspected witch from the city off to a monastery so she can be dealt with appropriately.
Both Cage and Perlman are rather convincing as a pair of grizzled companions and it is a shame that their obvious chemistry was underused. Throwing in a few more one-liners and witty asides would have made the story romp along at a bit of a better pace and injected a bit more humour to go along with the action. The rest of the cast just about did enough to earn their salaries, with Claire Foy going way beyond what was required of her with a wickedly smirky performance.
The actual action was fairly enjoyable, if not slightly clichéd. A ropey rope bridge is always a great set-piece for adding a bit of tension and that scene in particular was executed pretty well. The fights were on the whole exciting and the great thing was that you could actually see what was going on, a huge positive in my books in an age where tripods are harder to acquire than a sackful of diamonds. The thing that let these action sequences down, and the film as a whole was that the CGI was really shoddily put together and was a real distraction.
Overall I would say that the film isn't a must see, but probably worth checking out if it pops on TV at some point. The overall plot is a bit daft and thematically agnostic but is made entertaining enough with some decent performances and enjoyable action sequences.
The set up is that Nicolas Cage and Ron Pearlman play a couple of Knights, fighting in the crusades, who suddenly have an epiphany that slaughtering loads of innocent women and children probably isn't the most godly thing to do, so decide to walk away from their lifestyle as holy warriors in a rather aimless manner without any real plan what to do next. On the way to goodness knows where they decide to stop off at a city for some supplies for their trip, to wherever that may be, and then get rumbled as a pair of deserters. News spreads fast in these lands. After being thrown in jail for a while they get roped into transporting a suspected witch from the city off to a monastery so she can be dealt with appropriately.
Both Cage and Perlman are rather convincing as a pair of grizzled companions and it is a shame that their obvious chemistry was underused. Throwing in a few more one-liners and witty asides would have made the story romp along at a bit of a better pace and injected a bit more humour to go along with the action. The rest of the cast just about did enough to earn their salaries, with Claire Foy going way beyond what was required of her with a wickedly smirky performance.
The actual action was fairly enjoyable, if not slightly clichéd. A ropey rope bridge is always a great set-piece for adding a bit of tension and that scene in particular was executed pretty well. The fights were on the whole exciting and the great thing was that you could actually see what was going on, a huge positive in my books in an age where tripods are harder to acquire than a sackful of diamonds. The thing that let these action sequences down, and the film as a whole was that the CGI was really shoddily put together and was a real distraction.
Overall I would say that the film isn't a must see, but probably worth checking out if it pops on TV at some point. The overall plot is a bit daft and thematically agnostic but is made entertaining enough with some decent performances and enjoyable action sequences.