“Winter’s Tale” is the feature film directorial debut of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who penned the 2001 Best Picture winner “A Beautiful Mind”. The stars of that film: Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, join Colin Farrell in this romantic fantasy, adapted from a 30-year-old book. It’s no wonder that every frame of this film is neatly laid-out in black and white.
In the opening minute we learn that we cannot treat anything that happens through the eyes of reality. We are shown a bearded Farrell in 2014 New York City, and in the next scene a clean shaven Farrell of about the same age, but it’s 1895 NYC. How is this possible? That’s the intriguing element of “Winter’s Tale”. Unfortunately, there are just too many hoops to jump through and a lack of emotional impact to make this tale a successful one.
Farrell plays Peter Lake. Peter’s immigrant parents left him alone in America in the late-1800s when they were denied entry. He becomes a successful thief, working for a boss named Pearly (Crowe). But they have a disagreement and Peter leaves. Pearly doesn’t like it when a worker leaves him, so he sets out to kill Peter. This may sound a little extreme, until you realize that Pearly isn’t human, but rather a demon working for the Devil, in NYC. And he’s determined to crush people’s dreams and the one miracle that everyone is capable of.
Peter, guided by a magical white horse, meets the beautiful young daughter of a newspaper tycoon (played by Jessica Brown Findlay). She’s dying from consumption (better known now as tuberculosis). Kept away from the outside world due to her illness, Beverly has never loved nor been in love – until Peter comes along. Their romance becomes the central of the story, which also takes some interesting turns in the final act.
The first hour or so of “Winter’s Tale” has its pluses and minuses. Many of the scenes between Farrell and Findlay are lovely and moving, though they don’t generate much energy. Crowe’s mobster accent and over-the-top mannerisms are noticeably distracting, and his two scenes with Lucifer (played by a completely miscast A-lister) are even more so. The majority of this film is made tolerable by Farrell’s second emotionally convincing performance in a row (following “Saving Mr. Banks”).
But once the story completely shifts to present-day, I was instantly bothered by plot elements that stretched too far outside of the fantasy world to be believable. Goldsman tries to get us fully invested in these characters, if we weren’t already, for the climactic scenes. But since there was so little drama before, and I could sense things were not about to change in the final 20 minutes, my interest level dropped to practically zero.
So I began to pick-up on some unintentionally humorous elements, including a shot of six cars driving onto an icy which looked like a scene out of a Lexus commercial, and all the Dunkin’ Donuts product placement. Connelly doesn’t seem to even belong in the movie (neither does the flying horse). And a fist fight between Farrell and Crowe features some of the corniest sound effects ever.
“Winter’s Tale” is rated PG-13 for some adult content and violence, and is appropriate for teens and up. I was rooting for it for most of the way, but in the end this saga of good versus evil simply left me cold.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “Winter’s Tale” gets a C-.