It’s becoming much more apparent over the years that Nicolas Cage became famous in the wrong era. An action star in perhaps some of the worst films that have ever come to light from a major studio, Cage should’ve been an exploitation era superstar. With his questionable choices in studio fare buffered by much better ones on the indie scene, Cage has the cinematic resume that suggests he would’ve starred in Race with the Devil if he’d been his current age back then. Considering he was the main character in a remake of Gone in Sixty Seconds it’s not hard to think he would have wanted to star in the original. And it’s not surprising he could star in a film as bad as Season of the Witch, itself a big budgeted version of the sort of soulless & shameless type of cinema made famous decades ago.
Behman (Cage) and Felson (Ron Perlman) are first rate warriors fighting for the Catholic Church during the Crusades. When they wander into the slaughter of innocents, and disagree with it, they desert for better pastures. Wandering into a village cursed by a plague, they are offered a way out of their crime of desertion: accompany an evil witch (Claire Foy) to a monastery so the plague can be ended. Joined by a handful of characters otherwise known as “cannon fodder,” Behman and Felson are stuck with a moral dilemma surrounding the “curse” of the young girl. Is she really possessed or merely a scapegoat for a disease?
And one sees where Dominic Sena’s direction and Bragi Schut’s writing are going with the film. There’s a quiet, contemplative piece about the pratfalls of a journey surrounding the potential death of an innocent in the name of religious beliefs that aren’t completely fallible. Behman has the blood of innocents on his sword and is in quite a moral dilemma. Does he proceed along with his closest friend amidst a group of religious fanatics helping him out, knowing that he might be doing the exact same thing he did during the Crusades? Or is she really a witch with magical powers and he needs to help stop this from ravaging the lands? There’s an interesting piece waiting to come out of this film. There’s just one little problem with it all that turns it into a remarkably awful film despite the somewhat impressive setup: Everything else.
This is supposed to be a gritty supernatural action film but isn’t really all that gritty. With a PG-13 rating weighing it down, the amount of violence is too sanitized to be meaningful. The film opens with several massive battle scenes, harkening back to the impressive CGI work of a film like Troy, but for all the violence going on there’s no sense of danger. A film like this deserves and demands a hard R rating, especially with the material provided, but feels remarkably neutered without the sort of blood and violence the material warrants. Toned down it feels like a child’s vision of what a supernatural thriller with lots of violence would turn out to be. Throw in bad dialogue and cheesy one-liners from an ‘80s action film and a pedestrian approach to what should be a white-knuckle horror thriller and you have all the makings of a disaster. And usually that would be saved by a pair of lead actors chewing up scenery and going so completely over the top that the film succeeds despite itself.
Cage and Ron Perlman aren’t those actors. And they seem to acknowledge that fact early on.
They have a good chemistry with another, enough to make one wish they had a better film to be in. They sound like a pair of New Yorkers in the Middle Ages as opposed to being authentic to the era, which may not be a bad thing because both have distinctive voices. One wishes there was a generic buddy cop film for them to star in; the prospect of that film sounds much more fun than the two as a pair of knights trying to figure out their purpose. It’s almost more amusing to try and guess which actor has given up the earliest in filming. Early on the two seem to be infused with energy, especially during the large battle sequences, and there’s some hope that a quality film is on the horizon. Unfortunately it’s all downhill from there as this becomes rather pedestrian acting from two actors who normally maintain a certain level of competence.
Season of the Witch had its release date shifted several times throughout 2010, becoming a January 2011 release late in the game. For the first wide release of 2011 it also might end up staking a claim as the worst picture of the year as well.
Director: Dominic Sena
Notable Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Claire Foy
Writer(s): Bragi F. Schut
