Thursday, 28 March 2024

Supernatural 'Winter's Tale' a soapy, sappy love story

WINTER’S TALE (Rated PG-13)

February is the time of year for flowers, sentimental greeting cards and the Russell Stover heart-shaped box of chocolates. On top of that, Hollywood often gift wraps a romantic love story almost perfect for the occasion.

Well, that’s not the case for “Winter’s Tale,” a sappy romance tale that stretches credibility to the breaking point and tosses in a mix of supernatural mumbo-jumbo and good versus evil battles that may easily confuse or confound an audience primed for traditional fare.

The film marks the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldman (“A Beautiful Mind”). Aside from the scenery, there’s nothing really beautiful about this exercise into a fantasy world beyond any sort of tangible credibility.

Set in New York City, the story spans more than a century, starting with the fateful day in 1895 that a baby is set adrift on a model boat in the harbor outside Manhattan, as his prospective immigrant parents are forced from Ellis Island to return to their country of origin.

Flash forward to 1916, the orphan child is now an adult, in this case Colin Farrell’s Peter Lake, who matured on the streets of Brooklyn as a member of the Short Tails gang, under the tutelage of vicious crime lord Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe, bearing horrible facial scars).

A master thief who wants out of the business, Peter has been marked for a violent death by his one-time mentor. Ambushed by Pearly and his gang of black-suited goons, Peter makes an escape on a beautiful white steed, a mythical Pegasus.

The mysterious white stallion, acting as a guardian angel capable of taking flight, always appears at the right moment to whisk Peter away from impending danger. Yet, over a century’s time, Peter only calls his savior “Horse.”

When not busy repelling the brutal forces of Pearly’s henchmen, Peter can’t quite shake his thieving past, and so he breaks into the Victorian mansion of a newspaper magnate (William Hurt), when it appears the family is away.

Breaking into the home and finding the wall safe is easy. The hard part comes in encountering the unexpected presence of Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), the lovely daughter left behind as she copes with a losing battle against consumption, which requires maintaining a low body temperature by frequent exposure to the cold.

After meeting Beverly, Peter loses all thought of his illegal craft, and soon falls madly in love with the liberated, eccentric and inscrutable free spirit. So this is where the love story kicks in, though it appears to be ill-fated due to Beverly’s short life expectancy.

As Beverly and Peter first get acquainted in the drawing room of the family estate, Beverly asks “what’s the best thing you’ve ever stolen?” Peter replies “I’m beginning to think I haven’t stolen it yet.”

I don’t know if this dialogue is contained in Mark Helprin’s acclaimed nearly 800-page paperback novel of the same title, but in the context of the chance encounter afforded a few minutes in a two-hour movie, it comes across as syrupy romantic hokum.

In any case, as the Pearly Soames gang bears down on Peter, the two lovebirds escape the city, courtesy of the white horse, to the Penn country estate on the Hudson River, where the love story continues to unfold.

Handy in many things mechanical, Peter slowly wins over Beverly’s family, particularly the distrustful patriarch, with his sincere love and care for the slowly dying beautiful redhead.

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, Pearly visits Lucifer (Will Smith) in his underground bunker, mainly to seek permission to leave the city limits to hunt Peter. Absurdly, Lucifer flares his nostrils and bares sharp fangs. Wisely, Will Smith has no credits in this film.

Not so much luck for Colin Farrell, who often has the sheepish look of being trapped in this mystical nonsense. On another occasion, Peter asks “Is it possible to love someone so completely they simply can’t die?” Maybe so, in a movie that allows one to leap through time.

After Pearly and his gang get the better of Peter by tossing him from the Brooklyn Bridge, he later emerges in the present time, looking like a homeless guy in Central Park, drawing sketches of a redheaded girl on the pavement.

Here, he encounters journalist Virginia (Jennifer Connelly) and her little daughter (Ripley Sobo), who just might be the person he is meant to save. Don’t ask me how or why.

Oddly enough, Virginia works for the newspaper now run by Beverly’s youngest sibling, Willa (Eva Marie Saint), who most improbably remembers Peter from nearly a century earlier. If I am doing my math properly, I would think that Willa is well over 100 and even less likely to be running a publishing empire.

“Winter’s Tale” is mostly a puzzle. At times, it’s a love story and at other times, it’s Russell Crowe acting all fearlessly tough and brutal. The story believes in miracles but there’s not one to be had to rescue this supernatural soapy, sentimental tale.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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