About The Movie:
Abandoned by their father deep in a forest, young Hansel and Gretel
enter a gingerbread house and are nabbed by the old witch who resides in it.
The witch forces Hansel to continuously eat candy while making Gretel prepare
the oven, but the siblings outsmart her and shove her into the fire. Throughout
the years after the incident, Hansel and Gretel become ruthless bounty hunters
dedicated to exterminating witches. Their work is relatively easy because for an
unknown reason, they are immune to spells and curses. Hansel, however, is
diabetic as a result of his ordeal and needs to take a regular shot of a
medicine every day.
One day, in the town of Augsburg, Hansel and Gretel prevent Sheriff
Berringer from executing Mina, a young woman accused of witchcraft. Mayor
Englemann has hired the siblings to find and rescue several children abducted
by witches. Berringer hires trackers for the same mission, hoping to regain the
respect of the Mayor. However, all but one of the party are killed that night
by the powerful grand witch Muriel, who sends the surviving member back to the
town tavern to explode as a warning to the locals. Hansel and Gretel, with the
help of the Mayor's deputy Jackson, capture a witch and interrogate her. They
discover that the witches are preparing for the ritual of Blood Moon, which
requires sacrificing six boys and six girls, each born on a separate month.
Suddenly, Muriel, another witch and the troll, Edward, attack the town and
abduct the targeted girl. Gretel is knocked unconscious but is brought to
safety by a local boy named Ben, who is aspiring to be a witch hunter himself.
Hansel grabs a fleeing witch by her broomstick, but is lost in the forest.
The next morning, Hansel is found by Mina, who takes him to a
spring to heal his wounds. Meanwhile, Gretel enters the forest to search for
him, but she is assaulted by Berringer and his men for luring the witches to
their town. She is rescued when Edward arrives and mutilates the men and mends
her injuries. When asked by Gretel why he saved her, Edward answers that trolls
serve witches and walks away. Hansel and Gretel reunite at an abandoned cabin,
which they discover is not only their childhood home, but also a witch's lair.
Muriel appears in front of them, telling them the truth of their past. It is
revealed that Hansel and Gretel's mother was a grand white witch named
Adrianna, married to a farmer. On the night of the Blood Moon, the heart of a
white witch is needed to create a potion that makes witches impervious to fire.
As Adrianna was too powerful, Muriel targeted Gretel, who was revealed to be a
white witch herself. Muriel spread a rumor across the village about Adrianna.
To keep the siblings away from the mob of villagers, their father left them in
the forest before he was hanged while their mother was burned at the stake.
Following this revelation, the siblings battle Muriel before she stabs Hansel
and abducts Gretel for the ceremony.
Hansel wakes up to the sight of Mina, who reveals herself to be a
white witch. After Mina uses a spell to bless the siblings' arsenal, Hansel,
Mina and Ben head to disrupt the Blood Moon. While Mina mows down dozens of
witches with a Gatling gun, Hansel squares off against Muriel's minions and
frees the children while Edward defies Muriel's orders and releases Gretel
before he is thrown off the cliff by Muriel. With the ceremony ruined, Muriel
and the surviving witches attempt to flee, but the witches are killed by traps
while Ben shoots Muriel off her broomstick. On her way to meet up with Hansel,
Gretel finds Edward and uses her stun gun to defibrillate him back to life.
Hansel, Gretel and Mina follow Muriel's trail to the old gingerbread house.
During their confrontation, Muriel fatally stabs Mina. The siblings engage in a
grueling fight against Muriel inside the gingerbread house until they
decapitate her with a shovel. In the end, Hansel and Gretel collect the rest of
their reward for rescuing the children before embarking on their next hunt,
with Ben and Edward joining them.
What Is Good/Bad About The Movie:
H&G commits the sin of taking itself too seriously …
which is to say, it injects even a modicum of seriousness into a premise that
begs to high-dive off the deep end of irrationality with its tongue planted
firmly in its cheek. Far short of being dismissed as a failure, H&G just
isn’t as much fun as you’d imagine.
Our leather-clad bounty hunters are extremely busy as of late, for
powerful Muriel (Famke Janssen) and a coven of killers are collecting sacrificial
lambs for a rare blood moon. Gemma Arterton does what she can to liven the movie’s dour tone,
channeling her inner Han Solo to turn Gretel into a stone-cold bitch warrior
who practically barks “Ain’t nobody got time for that” as she evades trolls,
eviscerates witches and fends off a predatory sheriff played by Peter Stormare.
(Because whom else would you hire to play a lecherous sheriff in a movie called
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?) Arterton shows she’s better equipped to play
an action lead than the flimsy second banana – where she floundered in Prince
of Persia and even Quantum of Solace. Her spunk actually balances out Renner,
who does cool instead of charismatic in a misguided effort to push the film
toward a legitimacy it doesn’t earn.
Structurally, Gretel neglects to come up with much beyond its
concept, which puts a hardened spin on the classic Grimm fairy tale. It’s
perfectly natural to want to imagine Hansel and Gretel channeling an inner rage
following their near-fatal encounter with a sorceress. But H&G suffers from
a saggy midsection as Wirkola figures out how to pad his barely-90-minute film
until he can crank up the heat for a Rambo-esque finale. Time-killers range
from a love interest for Hansel (played by Pihla Viitala) to a gentle giant
named Edward, who befriends Gretel and proves useful when the chips are on the
table.
The director, however, is better equipped at ladling out buckets of
blood than he is at maintaining suspense or tension. Gretel delivers on the
promise of gore, as limbs are torn from bodies and messengers explode after
eating combustible worms, spraying tavern patrons with internal organs. The
spray of crimson blood cuts through the grim production scheme (no pun
intended) and drab visual palette. The movie's often mean and nasty, but that's
really its saving grace. “That was awesome,” screams a young Hansel and Gretel
groupie after a grisly kill, and you might agree, of that’s your thing.
I’m not saying there isn’t franchise potential here. Never forget,
even Clash of the Titans inspired a sequel. Maybe this is the start of a
series. We can only hope future installments realize the inherent ludicrousness
of the given premise. And at the very least, if H&G finds an audience,
expect to see another recognizable figure from stories past hunting werewolves,
possibly as early as 2014.
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