Winter's Tale - 3 smiles

You’re either going to love or hate “Winter’s Tale,” starring a very effective Colin Farrell. It’s a romance with fantastic elements, utterly lacking in cynicism, heading for the grandest emotions and deepest issues in life: love, death and time. It is partly a failure, but mostly it succeeds because of Farrell’s performance. He holds the emotional heart of the film together. Though a crook, his Peter is a character of complete honesty and purity and it’s a pleasure to watch how Farrell plays that. Whether speaking to a child, or to William Hurt as the sick girl’s father or to Eva Marie Saint as an old friend from days past, you can see Farrell striving to illustrate the purest emotions possible. The movie’s one problem is that writer-director Akiva Goldsman seems unable to balance all the story’s disparate elements – fantasy, fairy tale, supernatural morality fable and saga of old New York, especially in the last third of the film.

Peter (Farrell), good-natured thief in 1916 New York falls in love with Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay), consumptive heiress, while attempting to rob her father’s mansion. Their romance upsets Peter’s employer (Russell Crowe), a centuries-old demon posing as an Irish crime boss, who was already angry with Peter. There are other unique developments, such as flying horses, conversations with Lucifer and the premise that true love can lead to immorality. Goldsman presents these elements with conviction and they seem almost natural given the movie’s lush tone and look. And there’s real chemistry between Brown Findlay and Farrell. “Winter’s Tale” is shamelessly romantic and ultra sentimental and that’s rare in today’s often-cynical times. 2/14/14