Forgive me for I have sinned…I went and paid money to see Seventh Son. And you know it was not all that bad for a sequel to True Grit.
It was a bit hard to get into though.
You know how sometimes you lose the remote and find yourself watching a low budget fantasy and think to yourself ‘if only they had a larger budget to work with and someone in it who’s name I recognized’ that it would not be so bad.
Then at some later date you see Seventh Son and realize why you don’t work in Hollywood.
The casting was off right from the start.
Enjoying movies requires that you suspend your disbelief and such, and that can be quite a chore when Julianne Moore looks a little too much like Julianne Moore. At least she got dressed up as a Valkyrie in The Big Lebowski, but here she is made to work with nothing but some dark makeup and turning into a dragon from time to time. I guess you just have to keep reminding yourself she’s some big bad-ass fantasy witch. I kept at it and eventually she seemed to be OK for the part. No, not really.
Of course Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Rooster Cogburn (True Grit), but the character himself just didn’t seem right. Again, not Jeff’s fault, he nails the cantankerous old coot. I was just hoping they would write in a new character.
Unfortunately the film suffers from one of the most common of Hollywood’s ticks…the dreaded everyone ‘just happens to be’ somehow related or have some history together phenomenon.
Spoilers!
Basically, Rooster is a witch killer and his ex-girlfriend is now a big bad-ass witch that kills people. So of course Rooster is out to take her down. Having lost all his previous partners, he is training a new one, a Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.
Of course this new partner falls in love with Rooster’s ex-girlfriend’s niece (the beautiful Alicia Vikander), who’s also a witch, and she rewards his love by stealing a necklace from him, a necklace that was given to him by his mother. And of course The Seventh Son’s mother stole it from her previous BFF…who of course happens to be Rooster’s witch of an ex. Funny how all that sort of works out, just like real life.
The CGI is great, and the production itself is very good. The supporting cast ranges from good to too familiar for their own good.
At least the film has Alicia Vikander in it.
Moby Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 Moby’s!
And it’s also got a decent wallpaper available (click for larger version):
