Oscar-winners Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges can’t save Seventh Son

Sergei Bodrov’s Seventh Son indulges in visual excess at the expense of the essentials — plot, for instance.

Julianne Moore as sorceress Mother Malkin, a hisser of the highest quality, in Seventh Son.

Acting is a humbling occupation. One day you’re accepting an Academy Award, the next you’re seen in a turkey such as Seventh Son.

That’s best-actress Oscar winner Julianne Moore’s lot in another of these indecipherable fantasy films in which digital effects, darkness and Lord of the Rings-type ambition trump the more essential elements of a film: story, performance and logic.

Moore stars opposite another Oscar-winner, Jeff Bridges, in Sergei Bodrov’s overextended sorcery fantasy. Moore is the sorceress Mother Malkin, a hisser of the highest quality who escapes prison and is chased by Bridges’ “witchfinder”, the wise old man Master Gregory, aka the Spook, who co-opts the seventh son of the seventh son, Ben Barnes’s Tom, to help. Or are they protecting their land from the vengeful witch? Whatever their task, it is not simple — and it’s complicated by the presence of shapeshifting beasts, amulets, gaping plot and characterisation holes and Mother Malkin’s ability to transform into a dragon. Based on a true story.

Actually, the film is based on the first book in Joseph Delaney’s 13-book fantasy series and it will satisfy the young boys who enjoy the reads. But for this old boy, it was a major let-down given the quality of the cast and the director.

Sergei Bodrov’s long career has delivered some crackers, including Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan in 2008 and 1996’s Prisoner of the Mountains. The latter was a massive, largely engrossing biopic that had Hollywood salivating for obvious reasons. He displayed acuity with
a huge canvas. But Hollywood is also falling into a trap with its Russian creative emigres.
DVD Letterbox prefers not to generalise too often, but I think we can generalise about two streams of contemporary Russian film directors. There is the commercial, showy school personified by Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Wanted and the coming, gulp, Ben-Hur) and to a lesser extent Andrey Konchalovsky (Runaway Train), and then there’s the more literate, formal school following Tarkovsky, including Aleksandr Sokurov and Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan).

Bodrov’s Seventh Son (M, UniversalSony, 98min, $39.95) places him, perhaps surprisingly but firmly, in the former school of shamelessly commercial operators who prioritise visual acumen. Which is fine, but there’s a wanton extravagance to such films. As in the case of Bekmambetov’s films, a sane viewer will be frustrated by the sound, fury and frenetic movement, and Hollywood will be frustrated at all the money being sprayed across the screen.

Bodrov has all the requisite components at his disposal but can’t harness a credible performance with all his visual excess. Amid all that there are some captivating scenes and the occasional laugh (not always intentional). But he allows Bridges to go all Tom Hardy and the dialogue to revert to cliche, so the film’s assets are diminished.

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