Broken hearts make heartless queens who banish love
and finer emotions from their kingdoms. Evil older sister Ravenna has taken
over yet another kingdom when she’s confronted with what seems like her
nemesis. Younger sister Freya is in love and she soon has a little baby. But Ravenna
proves to Freya that her love has betrayed her and Freya loses her baby. Freya’s
scream of anguish conjures waves of tiny broken glass pieces.
Broken-hearted Freya turns into the Ice Queen of her
own kingdom where she raises an army of little children cruelly taken away from
their families. Missing your mother? That’s love and love is forbidden in this
land, love is a sin, she says.
Eric and Sara, two of the children thus trained, grow
up into Freya’s best warriors, leading her army to conquer many more lands.
It’s when they fall in love with each other that Freya does what her sister had
done to her – separate them at any cost, no matter how cruel the deceit.
Seven years later, Freya eyes Snow White’s kingdom and
her mirror of course. In a fantasy world peopled by goblins on an island and dwarves
who make a foursome for some light humour, Eric and Freya are reunited only to
find that all’s not well with their love.
The prequel to Snow
White And The Huntsman is a longwinded and predictable tale of betrayal and
cold-hearted manipulations. Ultimately,
in trying to fight Eric and Sara’s love, Freya discovers what her own older sister
had done to her baby all those eons ago. The cold war between the sisters is a
fight to the finish.
The prequel ends saying Eric and Sara’s love and love
in all other forms lives on and Snow White’s kingdom is safe for now.
More than the chemistry of the lovers, paradoxically,
it’s the icy siblings played by Charlize Theron and Emily Blunt who scorch the
screen, Charlize with her calculated evilness and Emily as cold but vulnerable
Freya. Chris Hemsworth as Eric the huntsman who won’t give up on love adds a
chunk of hunk-value.
Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan relies more on freezing
wow special effects than on Evan Daugherty’s story which is just another grandma’s
tale.
For a film that doesn’t enthusiastically spur you on
to the sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s
War gets a 2* rating.
Reviewed
by
Bharathi S Pradhan
Senior Journalist & Author