Witch's Mirror That with “Snow White” and many other fairy tales long ago it was time to do something in the style of a real fantasy blockbuster, it became clear from “Alice” Tim Barton – the most grandiose and impressive film fairy tale in the history of cinema. It is not surprising that from the same producers, the new Snow White came out with the same epic canvas, a spectacle incredibly beautiful and juicy in the richness of events. However, there is no longer a brand of “Disney” and the same Tim Barton, who was on the shoulder to put a gloomy forest and a grand final epic.
Nevertheless, the brand “Universal”, which gave us cool “Fast and Furious”, “Jurassic Park”, the grandiose “Sea Battle” this year, and the delightful “Brave Pepper” last year, and much more over the years, also set up a positive mood, but the choice of the director inspired great skepticism. And for good reason. Where Rupert Sanders was pulled out is completely unclear, a person did not appear in any other film profession before receiving the director's chair in a multimillion-dollar blockbuster and does not know how to make films, especially on such a scale.
What was supposed to look like an epic backstory, a rich and tense escape, as well as a final grand battle, in the hands of Sanders turns into a little-sighted television performance, where dialogue dominates the action, the army does not even think to hide behind arrow shields, warriors declared “under the banner of the king” all over and next to different flags and colorful coats of arms on shields, and all the action is muffled by ineptly divorced scenes of relations between the characters.
Oddly enough, the character of the hunter, performed by the brilliant and cool Chris Hamsworth, is both the main plus of the picture and its minus. The character is necessary, worthy of a solo fantasy franchise and cool adventures, no worse than the analogous role of Thor in Marvel comics, the hero of Hamsworth is exposed as some alcoholic loser who is always defeated. He loses both in a drunken fight and in a fight with a forest troll, although it would seem that he has no equal in courage, and he cannot take courage. And he presents himself more effectively and brightly than the “fair prince” of this fairy tale story, but does not even begin the expected training of Snow White to fencing with weapons.
The number of inconsistencies and plot holes skyrockets, when afraid to pick up a dagger suddenly begins inspiring speeches, leads the army and without any reason becomes a girl-rambo, whose formation from a gentle sharpened girl in a killer car we would like to watch the whole film. In addition, neither Stewart nor Hamsworth can play with their eyes, they need scenes-dialogues and scenes-actions to manifest themselves and present the characters, and the director regularly arranges them with some incomprehensible glances, "significant" views and silent episodes, absolutely nothing bearing. Hamsworth manages to keep all his coolness, and Stewart is really charming and good.
Spectacular Charlize Theron, naked bathing in milk, sucking out youth, near which her faithful mirror is always a witch, as well as in addition to the already quite typical role of a powerful woman, sparkling eyes, does not produce anything super-interesting on the screen, although her heroine is brilliantly thought out through flashbacks, a line with her brother and many other details. Part of the audience, of course, will be incomprehensible than this Kristen Stewart is more beautiful Charlize Theron, but if you drip deeper, the film only metaphorically reflects the current situation in the cinema, when really bright pictures with actors of star status suffer failures, and some unknown from where the pop-up boys and girls from “Twilight” have wild excitement, a huge fan base and commercial success.
Most of all, in a pleasant sense, the masters of special effects distinguished themselves. Even poorly filmed action scenes are furnished with impressive graphic powers with knights and monsters breaking into black glass, with an abundance of forest monsters, with a chic man-mirror, and an amazingly beautiful forest spirit deer (apparently an example of Mononoke) and the charming creatures surrounding it. Yes, such a picture would be better shot, say, Guillermo Del Toro, with his love for quality monsters.
And the most offensive here is even the mediocre directorship of Sanders and the inept camera work of Greg Fraser (another person is unknown as having got into such a large-scale and expensive project!), and the fact that the spectacular cast of seven dwarves here is not even secondary heroes, but generally modest cameos and characters of the third degree. If the wise hero of Bob Hoskins will somehow be remembered by the audience, then the cool Ian McShane and everyone else do not show themselves in any way. Even the names of the Roman emperors do not find proper presentation, and dwarves (you won’t believe it, they even sing and talk about gold mining!) remain without personalities and character. Episodic guides to a beautiful forest kingdom, where it would seem you can hide, train, gather an army, even miraculously take forest creatures into battle for a greater epic and scale, but immediately turn out to be covered by the servants of the queen witch Ravenna.
Instead of focusing, according to the title, on the characters of Snow White and the hunter-Hamsworth, the action in abundance arranges a bunch of unnecessary scenes. Throughout the picture does not leave the feeling that initially the film was exactly twice as much, an hour for four, and then was extremely unsuccessfully reduced and remodeled, losing all the logic of the narratives and a lot of binding, important and interesting scenes.
For children it turned out too scary, for girls too little romance, for men there is a lack of epic, action and... naked Charlize Theron, oh yeah! If you make a fantasy out of a film, it is really cool, bloody and not censored, but the resulting picture is full of blood and murder. As well as fabulous revivals, without which the film would look too cruel and gloomy. The fairy tale, which ceased to be naive and kindergarten, acquired new frames, an interesting interpretation and a sea of colorful special effects. This is really a spectacle film that you need to go to, that you need to see, that you want to recommend even with all sorts of minuses.
The star cast performs a minimum program, presenting memorable heroes. Yes, they could be much better prescribe, give someone more scenes and the like, but even though the film masterpiece of this action did not work, Snow White and the Huntsman is a bright, spectacular and very good movie, surpassing many other adaptations of this fairy tale.
Beautiful, but mediocrely staged, fantasy action pleases the eye with the visual component and richness of high-quality special effects, almost every one of which is a small masterpiece, whether it is crumbling warriors or the transformation of a pack of crows into an evil queen, a mirror creature, the attack of a forest troll or the visualization of fears in a gloomy forest. Every grain of computer graphics here is beneficial to the film, saving the situation from numerous other shortcomings. It turned out impressive and spectacular, and in the right moments very sinister and atmospheric, or vice versa fabulously beautiful! This film is definitely worth the attention! As well as high viewership.
7.5 out of 10
Original