Seventh Son (2014)

Seventh Son (2014)

Director: Sergey Bodrov

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ben Barnes, Julianne Moore, Djimon Hounsou, Olivia Williams, Jason Scott Lee

Sometimes movies get the shaft at the box office because of a lot of crap that goes on behind the scenes, stuff sometimes we as an audience are completely unaware of. For example, Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989) was a huge box office bomb, not because it was a bad film, but because of a shift in administration at Columbia Pictures, and so the new head honchos treated the previous administrations films like crap, so Adventures of Baron Munchausen wasn’t promoted well, the result was an excellent film that died a quick death at the box office. Of course, now the film is considered one of Terry Gilliam’s best, but when it was first released a shift in administration at Columbia turned it into a 60 million dollar fiasco. A similar thing happened to Seventh Son, not that Seventh Son is anywhere near as awesome as Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but it is a film that deserved a better chance at the box office. For me, it’s a fun film that’s far from being terrible. The problem with Seventh Son was that it was produced by Legendary Pictures, who at one point were going to partner up with Warner Brothers to distribute the film (if you check the poster I've posted it actually has the WB logo!) but that partnership fell through and Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures parted ways. Then Legendary partnered up with Universal Pictures, but by then, the film’s release had lost momentum. The thing is that when movie buffs see constant delays and changes in release dates they get the feeling that the film isn’t going to be that good, because the studio is stalling its release. Film buffs can sniff a stinker from miles away! I myself felt the delay was because the film wasn’t going to be that good. What did I know about a shift in partnerships between studios? So the film was a box office bomb in the United States which at least made its budget back with its worldwide intake. Still, I feel American audiences could have given this one a better chance.

Seventh Son is all about a Master Gregory, a sorcerer who dedicates his life to killing monsters, demons and witches. He has an apprentice, but loses him in a battle with an evil witch called Mother Malkin; so since a sorcerer cannot be without an apprentice, now Master Gregory has to find a new apprentice, The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. You see, supposedly, the seventh son of a seventh son makes perfect sorcerers’ apprentice. So Gregory is searching for that special young man. Once he finds him, they have to team up to go up against Mother Malkin, before she becomes all powerful and rules the land with her coven of witches.

The thing about Seventh Son is that it was actually entertaining. I was ready to rip it a new one, because honestly, I was expecting a terrible film. The fact that the studio held this one back for so long made me raise a red flag. Usually when a studio gets cold feet with the release of a movie, it’s because the movie is bad and they are looking for just the right moment in which to release it so it won’t have much competition at the box office.  Also, who the hell was this director? I knew nothing of Sergey Bodrov’s body of work, I didn’t know what to expect. I had no basis of comparison. Thankfully the film turned my expectations around. Almost immediately Jeff Bridges portrayal of Master Gregory got me to like the film, I mean, here’s Jeff Bridges breathing life into this character, he gave it a real unique persona, I liked that about it. Bridges infused the character with just the right amount of comedy and charisma. So much so that some reviews say that it’s Bridges Master Gregory that saves the film. I have to say that it certainly is one of the films high points, but the film has other good things going for it as well.

You see, this is a fantasy film along the lines of let’s say, Willow (1988), Legend (1985) or Krull (1983); films in which our heroes exist in a magical land filled with monsters, magic and witches. On these types of films, the main character goes from zero to hero, sometimes in a matter of seconds and obviously, always going through a quick training montage with their ‘master’. In this sense, Seventh Son is not original at all, which is one of the reasons it doesn’t get a perfect score from me. You see, this film goes through all the cliché’s of a heroes journey, finding his magical sword in a magical cave…being trained by his master and finally, seeing  the main character put what his learned to good use in his first adventure. But it’s all cool, because it surprised me that Seventh Son actually took some of those clichés and turned them around. For example, there’s a moment in which the apprentice, Tom Ward, finds a magical sword and grabs it from the hands of a corpse, a scene that reminded me of identical scenes in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Legend (1985), then the film surprises me and has the spirit of the former owner of the sword actually fight with Tom for his sword! So while Seventh Son isn’t completely original, it still has the ability to surprise you at certain points. It's well aware of fantasy movie cliche's so it tries its best to turn them around. The dialog is quick and witty because the filmmakers know that we're savvy, so the dialog gets to the point rather quickly, it doesn't stall.

Films like Seventh Son are essentially monster films; they exist to wow us with their monsters. Remember the two headed dragon in Willow (1988)? Or Meg Mucklebones, the water witch from Legend (1985)? How about the army of Skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts (1963)? All show stopping monsters! Well, Seventh Son is this kind of film, filled to the brim with monsters at every turn. I enjoyed the creatures on this one, in fact this film felt like a homage to all those old Ray Harryhausen fantasy films like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) or Clash of the Titans (1981). Actually, one of the creatures that they fight in Seventh Son feels like a total update of the Kali Statue that Sinbad fights in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973). So at least the filmmakers behind Seventh Son knew exactly the kind of film they were making. They made sure the monsters were awesome to behold. Modern “monster films” sometimes offer us generic monsters that we can’t really take a good look at, in Seventh Son the monsters are a showcase and I have to admit I loved that about it. Not only that, I found them to be well animated. The only time I like computer generated images is when they are done right, and on this show they got the monsters right. The only negative thing I can say about the effects is that they decided to use morphing effects, which I think are out dated. Sadly they use them on Seventh Son all the time, which was a huge let down. So the computer effects go from freaking awesome, to not so freaking awesome and in that sense the film is a bit uneven. But I will say that in terms of effects, the good out weights the bad.

Above, a creature from Seventh Son (2014), below The Kali Statue from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

So what we got here ladies and gentlemen is not a classic or a masterpiece, but a damn fun fantasy film with cool monsters and a cool character thanks to Jeff Bridges Master Gregory, who infuses enough comedy and charisma into the proceedings to keep us entertained. The monsters are cool, and the film harkens back to the old Harryhausen fantasy classics, where monsters mattered! And speaking of the monsters and the effects on this movie, the visual effects were produced by John Dykstra, the visual effects genius who's worked in films like Star Wars (1977), Lifoforce (1985) and Spiderman (2002) among many other effects heavy films, so this is probably the reason why the monsters on this film are so cool. Plus it has an excellent cast. We even get a The Big Lebowski (1998) reunion with Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore working together again. The only thing that brings it down is that it isn’t all that original, and the CGI is sometimes off. But otherwise, we have a fun film you should give a chance to if you like fantasy and monster films.

Rating: 4 out of 5  

  

The Postman (1997)

Title: The Postman (1997)

Director: Kevin Costner

Cast: Kevin Costner, Will Patton, Olivia Williams, Lorenz Tate, Giovanni Ribisi

Review:

To me, The Postman is the Gone with the Wind (1939) of post apocalyptic movies, and that’s probably not a popular opinion but I stand by it. Normally, seeing a post-apocalyptic film equals watching a low budget, badly written/acted film. The big budget post apocalyptic film that is shot like an A-film, with A-list actors is not the norm. They exist, but they are not in the majority. This was a huge production, it cost 80 million dollars to make. It was shot in beautiful locations all over the United States, it has a great cast, it’s based on an award winning book yet for some reason, critics decided to lambast it as “worst movie of the year” It was even nominated for various Razzie awards. The problem is that sometimes, once an important reviewer or critic decides a film is bad like say Roger Ebert for example, then the rest of the world has to agree, simply out of fear of appearing stupid.  Then suddenly everyone believes a film is terrible just because of one or two prominent people thought so, this to me is what causes the death of some films. Maybe the themes and ideas are to liberal and so all conservatives and the media gang up to give it a bad reputation? Whatever the case, I personally though this movie was all kinds of good. Maybe a little repetitive with its themes and maybe a tad bit too long, but in no way would I say this was a bad movie!

A man and his donkey

In The Postman we meet a lonely, nameless nomad who wanders across a post apocalyptic wasteland America living his life in peace, traveling across the country with his trusty mule ‘Bill’. They go from town to town performing Shakespeare for the entertainment hungry survivors of the apocalypse. One day, while performing in one of these towns, the nomad gets picked up by a group called ‘The Holnists’, a military group looking to grow in size so they can take over the country and start a new tyrannical form of government. But the nomad, whom everyone now calls ‘Shakespeare’ doesn’t want to become a part of this army, so he escapes and takes his chances out in the world, on his own, the way he’s always done. On his travels he stumbles upon a mail truck, with the mail man dead inside. The only thing that remains is the mail mans skeleton, the mail mans uniform (which Shakespeare quickly appropriates to shelter from the cold rain) and a bag of old letters. The nomad then takes the post man’s uniform and the bag of old letters and travels to a nearby town, posing as a postman who comes to bring mail. He tells them he is a representative of the United States Government and that the government is re-establishing itself, that they have a new president called ‘President Richard Starkey’ and he tells them that things are getting better and better. He lies to them because he wants to give them hope. In this post apocalyptic world, The Postman becomes a symbol of hope to those who have none.

So this would mark the third time that Kevin Costner worked in a post apocalyptic film. The first was a film called Testament (1983), a film that took place within a typical American suburb and how the community reacts to a nuclear attack. I’m sure this film must have been specially chilling to watch during the 80’s when a lot of people lived in constant fear of dying in a nuclear holocaust. The film’s a pretty realistic portrayal, not over the top, not comic-bookish. In contrast to the realism of Testament, the second Costner post-apocalyptic film was Waterworld (1995), a comic book of a movie which portrayed Costner as a loner surviving in a world in which the ice caps have melted. Most of the land is buried under water and so, a society that survives in man made atolls is the only thing that remains. He plays something of a selfish asshole that only cares about his own survival, yet ends up learning to help others anyways. I enjoyed Waterworld for various reasons, all of which I’ll be getting into on my upcoming review for it. Then comes The Postman (1997), which Costner made shortly after Waterworld, and maybe that’s partially what hurt it a bit. Both films have many similarities. They are both post-apocalyptic, their both about a loner, and like Dances with Wolves (1990) and Waterworld, this loner comes to aid a group of people against a tyrannical form of government. It seems like for a while there and maybe without realizing it (or maybe entirely on purpose?) Costner made a series of films with extremely similar situations and themes. So by the time The Postman rolled in, it felt like he was being redundant. This in my opinion might be the only thing that brings The Postman down a bit.

In all other departments The Postman feels epic, well acted, well shot. It’s a beautiful film to look at, sometimes too beautiful for a post-apocalyptic film. At times it actually feels like a western. At heart, it’s a film that speaks about the best and worst things in human nature.  What makes America, America? Is American what we want it to be? This is the kind of film, like many others before it that criticizes certain elements we still see in the modern world: war, tyranny, greed and complete Disregard for human life. Why treat others as less because of their skin color? Why try to dominate man for your own selfish purposes? Why can’t we all just live in peace in this world? Is this just idealistic thinking? Perhaps, but the world would definitely be a better place if we all strived for happiness, peace and understanding and that’s why I enjoyed this film, it strives to remind us that even though we live in a messed up world similar to the post apocalyptic world of The Postman, there’s still hope. We can still strive to make society and the world better, yeah, I got faith in humanity that way. Why should a film be castigated for promoting peace?

Maybe this film got heat because its main character doesn’t want to be part of the army? The Postman tells a military leader “a fighter is the last thing I will be” Same as Chaplin’s character in The Great Dictator (1940) The Postman cares nothing for war and killing, he just wants to fall in love, to sing and dance. Some of the warmest scenes involve just that. By the way, The Great Dictator, one of Charlie Chaplin’s masterpieces (dare I say his most important one) is an equally subversive and controversial film because of the anti-military message it puts across. One of my favorite lines in The Postman is “wouldn’t it be great if wars could be fought just by the assholes who started them?” Now there’s an idea! But no, during war the ones that die are the people, not their leaders.

Some might get the idea that because of its pacifist message The Postman is an anti-American film; which is probably why it had a tough time at the box office, but it isn’t. It’s a film that wants a better America, a better country to live in, a better form of government, and lets not keep things centered only around America, this film simply wants a better world period. Not a tyrannical one, not one centered on war. This is probably the reason why in the film, they make a new American flag and on its white lines it reads “The Restored United States of America” At one point, the villain tells The Postman “you don’t care about anything! You value nothing! You don’t believe in anything! That’s what makes me better!” and The Postman answers “I believe in the United States!” letting us know that yes, this is a film that cares for its country; it simply wants a better one. One of the main characters in the film is looking for a better place for her child to be born in, cause this place they are currently living in simply isn’t it. Society as we know needs to improve, evolve and become something better. It needs to achieve its full potential. So what we have here is a film striving for a better world. War isn’t it. Being part of the military isn’t it either, in this film, the good guys, the peaceful men fight only because they are forced to. You ask the filmmakers behind The Postman and they’ll tell you: peace is where it’s at.

Rating: 4 out of 4