An easy object of ridicule for its troubled production, underwhelming box office results and for Jeff Bridges' accent sounding like he has a gerbil stuck in his mouth, Seventh Son is actually better than expected, meaning it's harmless fantasy fluff rather than an unmitigated disaster. If I had watched this as a 13 years old I would probably have loved it, at least before forgetting it within two hours.
Trite writing is salvaged to an extent by decent production values and a fine cast. Bridges sounds ridiculous but at least he doesn't commit the cardinal sin for this kind of silly movies, which is being boring; ditto for Julianne Moore in a campy turn as a witch queen. Ben Barnes is the anodyne protagonist - he makes one miss even perpetually morose Kit Harington (Game of Thrones's Jon Snow), who bites the dust in the prologue. Alicia Vikander fares better as the love interest.
Supporting cast is solid, with Olivia Williams, Antje Traue and Djmon Hounsou, the latter now terminally typecast as fantasy/sci-fi henchman.
Direction by Sergey Bodrov is competent, but Seventh Son needed flat-out amazing set-pieces to redeem the bland writing, not just a few brawls with whooshing knives, extras falling like ninepins and the queen's ethnically diverse lieutenants - looking like X-Men dropouts gathering for a Dungeons & Dragons cosplay - dispatched anticlimactically.
Considering Bodrov made one of the greatest unknown gems of the Nineties (Prisoner of the Mountains) this seems, to put it mildly, quite a step back.
5/10
Trite writing is salvaged to an extent by decent production values and a fine cast. Bridges sounds ridiculous but at least he doesn't commit the cardinal sin for this kind of silly movies, which is being boring; ditto for Julianne Moore in a campy turn as a witch queen. Ben Barnes is the anodyne protagonist - he makes one miss even perpetually morose Kit Harington (Game of Thrones's Jon Snow), who bites the dust in the prologue. Alicia Vikander fares better as the love interest.
Supporting cast is solid, with Olivia Williams, Antje Traue and Djmon Hounsou, the latter now terminally typecast as fantasy/sci-fi henchman.
Direction by Sergey Bodrov is competent, but Seventh Son needed flat-out amazing set-pieces to redeem the bland writing, not just a few brawls with whooshing knives, extras falling like ninepins and the queen's ethnically diverse lieutenants - looking like X-Men dropouts gathering for a Dungeons & Dragons cosplay - dispatched anticlimactically.
Considering Bodrov made one of the greatest unknown gems of the Nineties (Prisoner of the Mountains) this seems, to put it mildly, quite a step back.
5/10