You know the story, right? Or at least
I hope you do because I'm kind of shaky on it because it's
been a long time. But Hansel and Gretel, twins I think,
lost in the wood, bread crumbs to get home, house made of
candy, evil witch fattening them up because nothing says
'children's fable' like cannibalism, with these two kids
eventually slaughtering the bitch. That's how it went
down, right? But what about the rest of the story?
When these two grow up and swear undying and everlasting
revenge on the rest of those witches who would do them
harm? It's right here, in writer / director Tommy
Wirkola's wildly erratic, wildly uneven action / comedy /
adventure epic 'Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters'.
We catch up with Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma
Arterton) as they ride into town as the crazed sheriff (Peter
Stromare) was about to burn up the fair maiden Mina (Phila
Viitala) for the crime of witchcraft. We could mention
that Hansel looked more like Gretel's dad than her brother,
but we're not gonna mention that. Regardless, Hansel and
Gretel are kind of experts when it comes to witches and stuff
and they have declared this woman to be alright.
Yay. But the reason that these two are in town in the
first place is to find the missing kids of this town, kids
whose pictures are stenciled on milk bottles. That's
some high comedy right there.
So Hansel and Gretel get down to tracking down witches, and
recognize that these two are to Witch Hunting what Abu Ghraid
is to terrorism as witch torture is the order of the
day. Eventually brother and sister figure out something
big is going down with the witches, or they didn't so much
figure it out but the head witch Muriel (Famke Jannsen) just
shows up causing a ruckus, burning down stuff and blowing
people's heads clean off, and told them something big is going
down. She's bad news. And her plan is even worst
news for the captured children of this town, both Hansel and
Gretel, and society at large if this plan of Muriel's comes
close to working. Hopefully they can stop her. Or
not. It don't make us no never mind either way it
goes.
Years ago, my friends, I saw a bike racing
movie named 'Torque' and while this 'Torque' was universally
panned as an awful movie, I often hold up 'Torque' as to what
a bad movie can be. The people who make these movies
aren't idiots, and they know once they get into the screening
room when they have a turd on their hands and as such they
will try to fix it. 'Torque' got cut down to the bone,
keeping only the action and hot chicks and while watching it,
right before I was about to declare it garbage, it went
off. Thus at around 78 minutes long making it
awesome. For exhibit two of this drastic trimming
phenomenon I present to you 'Hansel and Gretel: Witch
Hunters'.
Allow me to qualify this by saying that 'Hansel and Gretel:
Witch Hunters' is no 'Torque', and while that might sound
damning, we still must be truthful here in these pages.
Similar to 'Torque', 'Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters' is
extremely brief, running at around eighty minutes long,
including a very lengthy opening credits sequence, and I'm
fairly certain that team Wirkola shot a lot more than 80
minutes worth of hi-def video for this movie. Thus we
can rest assured that this movie was cut down to the bone
because had this movie been thirty seconds longer it probably
would've been damn near unbearable.
In these eighty minutes what we are left with is the sketching
of some kind of rudimentary narrative, a little skin, plenty
of violence and lots of CGI action and as such this movie
comes by its 'R' rating quite honestly. We here at the
FCU don't have a problem with this and for the most part we
appreciate it. Also in these eighty minutes we have a
movie that can't settle on its style, cannot pinpoint its
tone, and appears to have no roadmap on the kind of movie it
wants to deliver to its audience.
Is it a comedy? Kind of starts off that way, but they
let that go really quick. Is it a horror movie?
There were lots of horrible images… bodies exploding, head
crushing, head splitting, heads meeting grisly ends via the
wrong end of shotguns, but gore doesn't make horror. Is
it an action movie? This is pretty what 'Hansel and
Gretel' settled on, and while this action was fast and furious
and kinetic, it was so fast and furious and kinetic that it
was kind of difficult to gage exactly what was going on in
this fast and furious and kinetic action to truly enjoy
it. Faster action isn't always better action. And
another minor quibble, if you're going to put someone who
looks like Gemma Arterton in your movie and then dress her in
tight black leather pants, you might want to pull the camera
back a bit. You see, as a fashion maven, I'd like to see
how those pants fit just in case I wanted to purchase a few
pairs for close of friends of mine. That's the only
reason. Really.
But similar to 'Torque', 'Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters'
did have the good sense to get out of town while the getting
was good. It takes up very little of your day and the
editors did the best they could to only include what they
thought was awesome and discard the mundane… like style,
character development, heavy plot points and drama. At
81 minutes, that probably doesn't work. At 80 minutes,
it almost does.
