Snow White and the Huntsman is the second, more anticipated Snow White film; the previous film, Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror was a light-hearted and stylized fairytale (see Romney’s Mirror Mirror video review).
The Huntsman gives the fairy tale a dark makeover in the style of Game of Thrones. Looking at the trailer, it’s pretty clear that this is what most people had in mind when a “darker” Snow White was announced.
The film stars Kristen Stewart as Snow White and Charlize Theron as The Evil Queen. The other notable player is Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman.
I don’t know if that’s more a credit to director Rupert Sanders or not, but overall, the cast gave a good performance with one minor detraction.
Kristen Stewart does a good job, but like many other young actresses, she has this one emotion that she seems to default to which is best described as dull surprise. I think all those years playing Bella Swan in the Twilight films are starting to take their toll.
This film is about as dense as a politically charged fantasy novel. It’s not just a fairy tale nor is it solely a cloak-and-dagger ascension story.
There’s a good layer of back story that most other filmmakers tend to leave out such as the one given to the Evil Queen, which is both interesting and sympathetic, that establishes her motivation clearly.
Unfortunately, Snow White doesn’t have much of a presence throughout the film. She does get a good degree of development in both the prologue and the third act but in the interim more of the focus is on the Huntsman and the Evil Queen than on our supposed protagonist.
From a technical standpoint the film does a very good job but it’s a little shaky at the beginning which is where they try to rush through the opening prologue of the story. Although we don’t get any shaky-cam there are some shots where they could have made some better choices.
This film is enjoyable, but there were a few things that could have been neatened up. The film does drag in a few places, and the focus should have been more on the protagonists.
On my personal scale I give Snow White and the Huntsman a 4/5.
