Big Picture Big Sound

Heartless Winter

In his 1983 novel, "Winter's Tale", Mark Helprin sets a mythic love story against the backdrop of historical Manhattan. Rich in magic realism and vast in scope, the novel is a veritable fairytale of New York. Thirty years later, screenwriter Akiva Goldsman ("A Beautiful Mind") attempts to bring Helprin's story to the screen, with less than magical results.

The hero of "Winter's Tale" is Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), a foundling raised on the mean streets of turn-of-the-century New York. A master mechanic and gifted thief, he works for an Irish mob boss by the name of Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). When we meet Peter, he's had some sort of falling out with his old employer, and is being chased down by his gang, the Short Tails. Before they can slice and dice him, Peter is magically spirited away by the sudden appearance of a strange white horse.

The furious Soames recognizes the horse as a guardian spirit named Athansor. As it happens, Soames isn't just a street thug, but the "demon enforcer" for the five boroughs. In the service of Lucifer himself, it's Soames' job to put down any miraculous activity that would win points for "the other side," including Peter's deliverance from evil. It becomes his imperative to kill both Peter and the horse.

Before Peter can get out of town, he decides to make one last score. He breaks into the Park Avenue mansion of newspaper magnate Isaac Penn (William Hurt) and meets Penn's young daughter, Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay of "Downton Abbey"). Beverly is afflicted with a consumptive fever, requiring her to be in the cold. Peter and Beverly instantly hit it off and fall in love (and into bed), despite Beverly's rapidly failing health and the differences in both their ages and stations.

In the world of "Winter's Tale", each person has the capacity to perform a miracle for one other person. Believing that Peter's love can save Beverly from death, Soames pursues the lovers before such a miracle can be performed. Things don't go as planned, however, and Peter becomes an immortal, without memory of his life with Beverly.

Jumping forward to 2014, we see Peter again. A chance encounter with a woman and her young daughter triggers the return of his memory and the realization of the miracle he's meant to perform. Soames is also still alive (and apparently running a boiler room of traders), and still willing to do anything to stop Peter from reaching his destiny.

If all of that sounds a bit hokey, well, you're right. It's ridiculously hokey. While magic realism may work in novels and in some television adaptations, such things generally don't translate well to film. (Notable exceptions: "Amelie", "Pan's Labyrinth" and even "Midnight in Paris", which might be more successful simply because they were written especially for film.) Though set in a magical world, "Winter's Tale" fails to create any kind of magic at all. Characters are woefully one-dimensional and underdeveloped. Peter and Beverly may have a grand love, but it feels as tepid as Beverly's bath water. Farrell and Findlay have a bit of chemistry, but their uninspired dialogue and Farrell's ridiculously floppy haircut constantly conspire to kill the mood.

Goldsman brings in a heavy hitter with Crowe, but his cartoonish, brutish Irish brogue is nearly unintelligible. He plays Soames as a bit unhinged, but comes off as a muscle-bound, petulant child rather than a truly frightening antagonist. The appearance of Will Smith as Lucifer in a Jimi Hendrix shirt and diamond hoop earrings, elicits the kind of chuckles the director probably didn't intend.

Lucifer's wardrobe isn't the only anachronism in "Winter's Tale." The story is, by nature, anachronistic, but Goldsman gets sloppy with adapting the 30-year old story and not changing the dates appropriately. A character who would be around 80 in the book, would now be well over 100 years old, with no explanation as to her relatively youthful appearance. Small things, like the fact that though Beverly has consumption, she never as much as clears her throat, are completely ignored. The appearances of other characters through time aren't explained at all - are they angels? Demons? In the end, it doesn't really matter, because the film does little to make the viewer care. "Winter's Tale" might have been better served as a series, where characters are allowed to develop and rules for this world are established. As it is, it's another poorly-executed fantasy-romance hoping to capitalize on the Valentine's Day crowd. One would find more romance and magic in a stroll through the New York snow.