You may have seen trailers for Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and thought to yourself: “Golly gee. That movie is going to be horrible. It doesn’t look like it has anything to do with the Hansel and Gretel fairytale that my grandmother told me when I was a young lass growing up in the German countryside. Plus, Jeremy Renner is just the less rad, American version of Daniel Craig.” While all of these observations are completely accurate, they should by no means keep you from enjoying the delightfully lowbrow train wreck that is Witch Hunters.
The film does begin with a brief rendition of the classic Brothers Grimm story, replete with ineffectively placed breadcrumbs and a wicked witch who looks like a moldy Sean Penn. Once this opening sequence is finished, however, we are launched into a laughably anachronistic steam-punk world inhabited by hair-metal bounty hunters, morally conflicted trolls and tons of really gross, mean witches. After a slew of action-packed action scenes, the “plot” ends up focusing on Hansel and Gretel trying to stop a particularly mean witch from doing something extra-mean to their beloved town. I think it has something to do with stolen children. It is not explained at length, which is great.
Perhaps the crowning achievement of American cinema is the tremendous variety of ways in which good guys kill bad guys. Witch Hunters respectfully acknowledges this tradition, but also builds on it in an exciting and refreshing way. Witches get shot, shoot each other and sometimes even blow up from being shot especially well or hard. One sequence features a witch who slows down time to dodge bullets, which was something I had never seen before and found to be visually impressive. There were enough awesome methods used to neutralize witches that the film evoked a similar emotive response (mainly reverence) as I recall watching 300 for the first and second times – not a hollow comparison.
Before you go thinking that Witch Hunters is an emotionally shallow film, allow me to explore the ways in which it is not. First, there is heartfelt and meaningful romance. Hansel meets a pretty girl and totally makes out with her in a mystical garden pool. The scene is shot really well, and they even sort of French kiss (the movie is rated R). Plus, you get to see most of Renner’s slammin’ Hollywood bod. Second, the film references emotional content such as being brother and sister and having parents, which is something a lot of us can relate to. Third, many of the battle scenes have to do with teamwork and cooperation with friends. As you can see, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye.
My favorite moment in the film comes when Hansel finishes killing a witch and drops a one-liner so forgettable that I genuinely forgot it right after it happened. This process actually repeats itself every few minutes, so I suppose I had several favorite moments. Hansel and Gretel have a lot of interesting, original gadgets such as a crossbow and a large gun. Making the witches’ broomsticks sound like speeder-bikes from Return of the Jedi was a good touch. I found it funny that Hansel takes insulin as a result of candy-induced diabetes. I found it slightly less funny that Gretel has an eating disorder.
