Film: "Seventh Son"; Cast: Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Ben Barnes,
Alicia Vikander, Kit Harrington, Olivia Williams, Antje Traue; Director:
Sergei Bodrov; Rating: **1/2
The "Seventh son of the seventh
son" sounds mystically powerful and alluring. But alas! This remains
just a distant fantasy in Director Sergei Bodrov's "Seventh Son".
With
too many tropes criss-crossing, the film is a confused, convoluted and
unclear tale of betrayal, revenge, training of an apprentice and
star-crossed lovers. And it does not do justice to any given track. It
is packed with supernatural powers displayed by shape-shifting witches,
half-witches, monsters and a "spook."
The film begins with a
prologue which reveals a knight imprisoning a spitefully powerful
witch in the core of the earth, but she later manages to free herself.
Years
later, the knight now revealed as Master Gregory (Jeff Bridges) also
known as "Spook"- fighter of supernatural evil, is summoned to ward off
the malevolence that has possessed a child. Gregory rushes to the spot
along with his apprentice Billy Bradley (Kit Harrington) only to realise
that the evil is none other than Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) the
witch he had once imprisoned.
During this encounter, Billy gets
killed. Gregory, knowing that Malkin derives her power from the
once-a-century Blood Moon, whose return is a mere week away, has to
juggle against time to find and train another apprentice.
He does
find his protege, Thomas Ward (Ben Barnes) in a rural farmland. He is
also known as "Tom - the seventh son of the seventh son." Tom has
special powers. He can look into the future. He had been prepared for
his journey with Master Gregory by the visions that have been haunting
him of late but nothing prepares him to face the dark forces.
So
it is Gregory who gives Tom practical instructions on how to tackle
ghosts, ghasts, witches, Boggarts and all manner of other things that
serve "The Dark".
Tom soon discovers that most of Gregory's
apprentices have failed for various reasons, including being killed in
the process of learning how to be a Spook. And it is during this process
that he meets Alice (Alicia Vikander), a half witch and niece of Mother
Malkin. She has been assigned to spy on the Spook. While romance brews
between them, the onus to save the world squarely falls on Tom.
Visually
the tone and texture of the frames are like medieval paintings,
picture-postcard perfect. The enchanting locales, period costume and
computer generated images add to the charm.
The visual and 3D
effects by designer John Dykstra combined with the sound design by
composer Marco Beltrami are good and effective.
On the
performance front, Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore look fatigued and
jaded. The rest of the cast delivers. Kit Harrington as the first
apprentice is wasted.
Ben Barnes is charming as the farmhand Tom.
He is also cute and convincing in the romantic avatar. But he fails to
impress as the superhero. That is perhaps owing to the fact that the
director and the scriptwriters failed to invest in him.
While the
director has put all his energies in creating a thematic goal with his
technical and artistic approach, he has not paid attention to the
lethargically crafted script delivered by screenwriters Charles Leavitt
and Steven Knight. Though they have adapted the screenplay from a story
by Matt Greenberg, based on the book "The Spook's Apprentice" by Joseph
Delaney, there are plot holes that make the narration a generic fantasy
fare.
