Rebooting a fairytale, a western and a sex drama

Watching three movies in one sitting can be adventurous. It makes one feel like it’s Cinemalaya all over again when we would often sit through five films in a single day. Our choices were dictated by the most pedestrian of reasons — Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters for what appears to be an ongoing trend in redressing popular fairytales; Gangster Squad for the Godfather-mafia look and Sean Penn; and Seduction for the return of Peque Gallaga.

Hansel & Gretel utilizes the Gingerbread House and the idea of killing the wicked witch inside by pushing her into the oven to burn to death. Everything else after that is purely witch-hunter territory. The back story of how two siblings Hansel and Gretel were left by their parents in the forest to fend for themselves is naturally explained by the end of the film.

But in between, we are given ruthless bounty hunters dedicated to exterminating witches served with all the blood and gore imaginable, plus exciting flying tricks from the siblings. Serious film enthusiasts, nevertheless, will dismiss the gruesome fairytale as rubbish. For one, both Jeremy Renner (Hansel) and Gemma Arterton (Gretel) don’t seem expected to act. Their characters are also immune to spells and curses, with Hansel a diabetic in need of a daily injection.

True the stunts the diabetic superhero demonstrates could rival his Bourne Legacy shots in Metro Manila. Still, he is capable of warmth and yes, love from Mina whom the duo had saved from execution as a witch by the town sheriff. We also find the protectiveness between the siblings too much; they appear almost romantic. In which case, that could be more interesting.

The next film we watched was Gangster Squad, directed by Ruben Fleischer and starring Josh Brolin as Sgt. John O’Mara, Ryan Gosling as Sgt. Jerry Wooters who becomes infatuated with Emma Stone as Grace Faraday, girlfriend of Sean Penn who plays Mickey Cohen, leader of the criminal underworld from Chicago westward. Nick Nolte, Michael Peña, Giovanni Ribisi and Robert Patrick are other members of the Squad.

The actual story tells of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers and detectives forming the “Gangster Squad unit” who plan to save L.A. from Cohen and his gang during the ’40s and the ‘50s. Naturally, it is a blood-and-guts film up to the end when Brolin is able to arrest Penn after a bare-knuckle boxing match amidst dead bodies in full view of a crowd. Thus ends the reign of Cohen as crime boss and the spread of the mafia into the Los Angeles area. Cohen is sentenced to 25 years to life, Grace and Wooters continue their relationship, while O’Mara quits to live a quiet life with his wife and son.

By turning the tale of a group of L.A. cops waging war against a gangster into a simple case of saving eight-year-old boys, “Gangster Squad achieves a rarity in this hyper-aware age: It’s genuinely so bad that it’s (almost) good,” states a reviewer. Parts of the script could have come from a western like when one of the squad asks his boss, “Is there a difference between them and us?” In another incident Brolin muses, “You lose everything but you win the war, you’re the hero. You lose everything but you lose the war, you’re just a fool.” We also find it so western-like where the women are strong and unafraid to die. Perhaps that is why we like it, since we love westerns even the spaghetti kind.

Next film was Peque’s much-awaited sexy romantic-drama Seduction from GMA and Regal Films. Naturally, everyone expected another Scorpio Nights from this, and of course, would be disappointed. Firefighter Richard Gutierrez and the two women in his life — the disturbed, self-destructive Solenn Heussaff and the inconsistent Sarah Lahbati — are enough to occupy his time. Besides, he has a sick father to care for and not enough money to go around.

We find the trio much too young to tackle a story as dark as this, written by Aloy Adlawan. In the same manner, our audience is, likewise, not ready for the fury and devastation that characterize this film. It might take some more time for us to go beyond sex in the CR and pumping in bed with glimpses of boobs and buttocks.

Still, we are happy that direk Peque has attempted it and the cast has obviously tried their best.

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