Winter’s Tale

• Written, Produced and Directed by Akiva Goldsman (Directorial Debut)
• February 13, 2014 (London) / February 14, 2014 (US)

A young burglar falls for an ill heiress.

There is plenty to love here in Winter’s Tale. The ingredients for a great and unique film exist in the narrative. Perhaps in the hands of a more competent director rather than a first timer like Goldsman was here magic may have happened. You need to know how to adapt material.

There is just one big problem that brings this whole movie down. And the main problem with Winter’s Tale is that it is two distinct films merged into one film. One follows the other with the second as a sequel to the first and neither one really overlaps. There are references to the first one in the second but as a whole they are separate stories.

As a viewer you conclude one story and then you are launched quickly into another. You are force fed a double feature. Taken by themselves each narrative is entertaining but on top of each other I just didn’t want to indulge.

Why Goldsman didn’t intertwine the stories in some way I don’t know. Winter’s Tale wouldn’t have been the first film with a narrative that bounced between the past and the present with one narrative paralleling the other. Was it presented like this in the book? If so it may have worked there but not here. A one-to-one translation is not always best. This movie would have worked much better if it had just been edited so that past elements would give way to present story elements. The traditional presentation makes for a very boring film.

We have a great cast and great sets and beautiful costuming (in the past) but a film that could have been rather impressive suffers because of the straightforward and standard story structure. Eva Marie Saint (in her final film role before retiring), Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Russell Crowe and Will Smith are all wasted here.

I went into Winter’s Tale very excited. It has all the elements of a movie that should go down as one of my favorites, yet it just missed the mark and just missing the mark caused it to be so very weak.

In the end Winter’s Tale is an interesting idea with a great cast that is very poorly executed. As pumped as I was for this when it came out, my level of disappointment is going to have me tell you to skip it. Completely.