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Niles native’s film finally is released
Hollywood director — and Niles native — Dominic Sena has been keeping a relatively low profile since the 2001 release of “Swordfish,” his moderately successful high-tech action film with John Travolta, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry. Since then, Sena’s only directing credits were a 2006 TV movie (“13 Graves”) and the unsuccessful 2008 Arctic thriller, “Whiteout,” starring Kate (“Underworld”) Beckinsale.
When “Swordfish” opened, Sena was riding high, thanks to the success of his previous film (2000’s “Gone in Sixty Seconds” starring Nicolas Cage and Angelina Jolie), and seemed poised to move into the big leagues. Whether bad management or simply a lack of ambition, Sena never quite made the leap to directorial superstardom like his former music video-trained colleagues David Fincher (“The Social Network”) and Spike Jonze (“Where the Wild Things Are”).
In a Vindicator interview at the time of “Swordfish’s” opening, Sena seemed remarkably unfazed by the pressures of helming a big-ticket studio picture with bona-fide stars (“We usually got what we needed in three or four takes, max,” he said). But the hellishness of post-production must have taken a toll on Sena’s stamina, and possibly his filmmaking appetite. “It’s been insane. I worked seven days a week last month and averaged maybe three hours of sleep a night,” Sena acknowledged in the interview.
Whatever the reason for Sena’s near invisibility in recent years, he hasn’t quite given up on the movie business just yet.
“Season of the Witch,” which opened in area theaters Friday, marks Sena’s fifth feature film to date (“Kalifornia” with Brad Pitt and the pre- “X Files” David Duchovny in 1993 was his auspicious directing debut). Originally slated for a March 2010 bow, “Witch” bounced around so long that many industry wags suspected it would never see the light of day.
And since the movie is opening “cold” — i.e., sans press screenings — it’s easy to suspect the worst.
Reteaming with Cage for the first time since “60 Seconds,” Sena seems like an odd choice for a medieval potboiler that only looks like it was based on a video game or comic book. Cage plays a knight (talk about nontraditional casting!) whose mission is to transport a suspected witch (British newcomer Claire Foy) across 14th-century Europe. Their ultimate destination is a remote abbey where the possible sorceress is to be, uh, interrogated by monks. Apparently religious muckety- mucks think the comely lass may be the cause of the Black Plague that is spreading pestilence across the continent. Prominently featured in the film’s supporting cast are a “Beast” (Ron Perlman of “Beauty and the Beast” fame) and Count Dracula (Hammer Films’ favorite ex-vampire, Christopher Lee).
On the basis of its campy trailer, “Season of the Witch” could very well become Cage’s next cult curio (think 2006’s bonkers “Wicker Man” remake). The Oscar-winning star certainly seems to be acting up a storm — for better or worse — in the coming attractions.
Not as evident in the trailer’s frenzied montage of action sequences is Sena’s typically sharp eye behind the camera. Hopefully that M.I.A. component surfaces in the actual movie and provides some visual solace to fans of the director’s previous works — all of which were distinguished by stylish mis-en-scene, even when the plots were as borderline trashy-absurd as “Witch.”
The almost-unreleased “Season of the Witch”; a failed comic book franchise (“Whiteout”); made-for-TV flicks. I guess it’s tougher than anyone imagined being a (working) director in today’s Hollywood.