Film Reviews

Season of the Witch

• Rating:
• Director: Dominic Sena
• Starring: Nicolas Cage
• Details: US/15A 94mins

I'm convinced that the US Government has threatened to break Nicolas Cage's legs unless he comes up with the millions he reportedly owes them in unpaid taxes. Why the hell else would an Oscar winner constantly churn out utter drivel on a bi-annual basis? For every brilliant performance in the likes of Bad Lieutenant or Kick Ass, there's a laughable addition to his CV - like this hilariously bad medieval flick. A painfully cheap looking production, it's ALMOST so bad it's good - but doesn't embrace the cheese enough to be deemed a guilty pleasure.
Cage and Ron Perlman are two knights who have been kicking vast amounts of ass in the name of the Lord during the 14th Century. But during one such scuffle, the lads kill a bunch of innocents, promptly throw down their swords and tell God to get lost. Alas, that means that they're branded deserters, and are subsequently captured by holy sorts, who demand that they take a young woman they believe to be a witch (and responsible for a horrible plague) to be tried in a town a perilous six days away. And by 'trial', they mean 'hanging, drowning and the subsequent saving of her soul' - if she doesn't wear a pointy hat in her spare time, of course.
There is so much wrong with Dominic Sena's film that it's difficult to know where to start. Firstly, the Swordfish and Gone in 60 Seconds director stages a couple of battle scenes early on that make a sale in Penney's look like a bigger budgeted sequel to 300; they lack anything resembling scope or passable action, with strange, awkwardly inserted quips to reinforce Cage and Perlman's bad-assery.
There's also supposed to be a gothic, horror-esque vibe to proceedings, but there's nothing scary about Season of the Witch. Sena may not have had the budget to really throw decent clams at the CGI, but some of it is embarrassingly bad. The acting, for the most part, falls in line with the general shiteness of everything else - which is a shame, given that it could have been the big screen break of Irish Misfits star Robert Sheehan. You can hardly blame the actors, though, when the script is this muck.
An atrocious film; paying to see this is cinematic self-flagellation.

Review by Mike Sheridan