Movie Review: 'Season of the Witch' could use some MSG

"Season of the Witch," currently playing at the Casino Fandango Galaxy multiplex in Carson City, is a movie that can't decide if it's a thriller fantasy or a buddy picture or a tour through muddled 14th century history. Maybe it's none of the above but instead just a mess.

It starts out with three alleged witches hanged and drowned (talk about overkill!), one of which comes back to do in the priest who condemned the three.

Then the movie jumps to the Holy Land in the 14th century where the Crusaders are hacking and slicing away on the infidels (read Muslims). Amid battle after battle the film's heroes Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman, knights on the Crusades, hack away merrily, betting on who is going to slay more victims.

Finally Cage (complete with disheveled hair, sour face) says he's had enough of killing women and children and decides to desert along with Perlman. They do so and head for home. (At this point it might be worth mentioning that Perlman not only looks more heroic, he also gets all the laugh lines as well as always looking neat and knight-like. He's obviously in this movie for the fun of it and takes nothing seriously as Cage seems to do.)

OK, they plod on, come to a castle (where the three witches were done in) and find that the plague of the year is killing all and the bishop or cardinal or whatever wants Cage and Perlman to take a local witch (Claire Foy) to higher church folk where she will be forced to end the plague.

Others join in the trek with Foy in a barred wagon. Perhaps the best part of the film is the band's efforts to get Foy and the wagon across an aging hanging bridge. Stomach tightening scenes here.

The group gets to the next castle and finds the judges-in-question all dead or dying of the plague. In a completely nonsencial battle scene Foy is unmasked as the unwitting carrier of Satan who fights Cage but loses as a special kind of bible is read.

Closing scene is the two survivors (not Cage and Perlman) riding off to a safer and presumably plague-less world. This is all pure hokum with Cage sort of drifting through the role looking disheveled and constantly upstaged by Perlman. The rest of the cast is there but hardly memorable. Foy never emerges from her rags or prison wagon long enough to make an impression.

If you come way with anything from this film it will be that the Crusaders were murderous killers and perhaps a sympathy for the Muslim targets of their swords then as they now claim. Church brass doesn't come off very either what with witchcraft and such. And Cage certainly suffers another failure, much like his "Mandolin" flop.

Yep, PG-13 and should have been R considering the bloody battles and close up face photos of plague victims. Ugh.

See if there are no bowl or NFL games on the small screen, or if you dote on Cage.

— Sam Bauman

Cast
Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Stephen Campbell Moore, Claire Foy, Ulrich Thomsen
Director
Dominic Sena
Producers
Alan G. Glazer, Tom Karnowski, Ryan Kavanaugh