Winter's Tale (2014), PG-13, ★

Colin Farrell and his horse.

Time travel and romance. It is odd how many Hollywood studios want to re-create both science fiction and romantic genres especially simultaneously. But, in this film, however, there's no substance because all it is trying to do is inhabit these characters in different settings but not organize the story and it becomes scattered pieces of the script all over the floor and the filmmakers said to themselves, "Ah! We have a good cast. Let's make the movie!"

In 1916, an infant boy growing up to become Peter Lake (Colin Farrell) is a thief raised by a supernatural demon posed as the gangster Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). He is marked by death by Soames when he wants to leave. He is rescued by a guardian angel, a white horse. When he arrives in Florida, he is encouraged to steal at one mansion. He is witnessed by Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay). Beverly asks him whether if he is robbing the place and he replies affirmatively but, he changes his mind and falls in love.

The movie is just plainly weird. It is a mystery wrapped in ten riddles inside 20 enigmas and the movie does not care. The film is riddled with corny dialogue, trite characters, and visual effects that are placed in arbitrary scenes that I was baffled that it was a serious project. What is more shocking is that it has a really good cast: Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Eva Marie Saint, William Hurt, and Will Smith. I wanted to know what was going on in that meeting that day talking how to create a project full of great actors and muddle them in an inept story.

The movie is sublimely grand that director Akiva Goldsman, best known for writing A Beautiful Mind and out of all screenplays, Batman & Robin, was not able to control what is going on with the story. This movie is a stupid mess full of hopeless and random characters that are impossible to root for.

*

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