In 1332, it is the Age of the Crusades. The doughty pair of knights played by Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman in “Season of the Witch” — a movie that appears to have been shot entirely on leftover sets from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” — regard the infidel hordes before them, and snicker.
“You take the 300 on the left, I’ll take the 300 on the right.” Obviously, but whoever kills fewer Muslims has to buy the drinks at the crucial aprés-massacre quaffing. Never mind. “I’ll kill them all myself,” says Cage.
So: The Middle Ages were “Lethal Weapon” with crossbows. Fine. But don’t expect us to be too scared when the knights, disillusioned by excessive killing in God’s name, are assigned to deal with an accused young witch (Claire Foy, who looks about as dangerous as the bass player in a Courtney Love band). They must transport her to an abbey that is home to a book of spells that will unplug her evil as she’s executed.
The charges against the witch seem sketchy. She appeared in the village, muttering to herself — after which came the plague. The knights point out that other villages were beset by plague, even though no punky bass players showed up. So there will be no judgment without a fair trial, Behmen (Cage) keeps telling the girl. Because there were so many of those in witchcraft prosecutions. In the 14th century.
Despite her apparent innocence, spooky stuff keeps happening. One knight goes nuts looking for his departed daughter. Also, as the gang, its horses, its cart and its prisoner rumble over a rickety rope bridge spanning a bottomless chasm (straight out of “Holy Grail”), the captive girl seems to have superhuman strength. Sorcery? Pilates? Stay tuned.
This is one of those movies in which subsidiary characters of no interest to anyone, especially the screenwriter, exist entirely to get killed, one by one, as we tramp our way through various unimaginative scenes of peril. The rope bridge leads to nothing except a dull restaging of an event from 100 other movies. It’s a rotting string of planks that looks as if it couldn’t hold a squirrel, yet Cage and Perlman bring a couple thousand pounds of men, beasts and equipment over it, only to have it snap one second after everyone is safely over. Where’s the skill?
When the dialogue isn’t abysmally jokey (“Did you see that priest? He looked like someone pissed in his holy water”), it clangs like chain mail on an anvil: “We have come a long way, seeing things few men have seen,” says Perlman, referring perhaps to Cage’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
Director Dominic Sena (“Gone in Sixty Seconds,” “Whiteout”) saves up most of his effects budget for the final scene, which contains a little twist and delivers the only semi-scary stuff in the movie. Finally confronted with the real malefactor, which is much cooler than anything we saw in the first hour and 20 minutes, a priest says, “We’re going to need more holy water.” Nice update on the famous line in “Jaws.” Except if you’re a priest, you can create all the holy water you want.
Audiences considering “Season of the Witch” should heed the timeless advice of its ancestor “Holy Grail” — run away! As for Cage’s career, tumbling down the cinematic gorge from “Ghost Rider” to “Bangkok Dangerous” to “National Treasure 2,” the brave knight Behmen sums it up perfectly: “There is no hope here, only the plague.”