HUNTSMAN WINTER'S WAR: REVIEW

A season of remaking old fairy tales and classics one thinks, after last year’s Cinderella and the recent Jungle Book, we have the Huntsman, based on Snow White and the evil queen and her sister trapped in the mirror on the wall. The premise is certainly interesting because it is based on an evergreen fairy tale. But, this one is a bit different because Snow White is only just a name in the movie which focuses largely on the travels and battles of a huntsman and huntswoman (if there is such a term).

Raised by the evil queen of the north who wants

to conquer everything in sight, the huntsmen are taught to live for nothing but battle. But, as Jeff Goldblum put it so elegantly in Jurassic Park, ‘life finds a way’, and so love blossoms in a regime where nothing soft or romantic is allowed to happen. But the queen does not like that and puts an end to it, or so she thinks, until it all comes back to her 7 years later. In the midst of this is the fabled mirror which speaks only the truth, which is now with Snow White, but moving some place. The quest for the mirror brings the queen and the huntsman against each other once again for scores to be settled and for a painful truth to be unveiled.

The Huntsman doesn’t feel like a fairy tale at any point of time. It starts off slow and dark, and remains that way till the very end. It’s the kind of movie which you feel was never destined for anything good. It’s not that it is bad, it just looks so jaded that you do not feel interested in what happens to anyone. You don’t bother about the huntsman and his love, you don’t care about what happens to Snow white because the mirror is calling out to her, you don’t care about all those ice statues in the great hall of the evil queen, the movie doesn’t make you care about anything. Even Chris Hemsworth can’t help things because he gets precious little to work with in terms of character, action, humour or emotions. The only positive you can say about him is that he manages to take Thor out of himself when he plays the Huntsman, which is a tough thing to do. The two dwarves, later four, one thinks were placed in the movie to provide a few light moments, but it does not work at all. One was actually excited to see Jessica Chastain in a character that was so unlike anything she has done before. The first impression one gets is that she is not totally comfortable doing this sort of thing, and she certainly does not look athletic enough to be a huntsman in certain scenes. And that makes the movie plunge further. The only time when you sit up is when the mirror releases an eviler queen from within itself, and you think things might get interesting. But, the movie hurtles to its end too soon after that without the evil potential being realized.

The action sequences, especially the one against the goblins, could have been much better, especially

when you have Chris Hemsworth. Huntsman just feels like a film stitched together without much of a vision, which is sad for a tale that has such depth. This is one movie that we could have done without. It’s not bad, it is just very ordinary and dull, which is a disappointment.

Could have done without this!

1.5/5