Marlon Brando tested film directors the first day of a film shoot. First, he‘d give a fully invested, high-quality performance. On take 2, he’d ever so slightly divest the performance emotionally, and fake it.
Then he'd watch which take got picked. If it was the fake one, Brando became disgusted and would only exert himself the bare minimum for the duration of the shoot, considering the venture “pearls before swine.” Understandable.
For many reasons probably, “Seventh Son” is such a venture for Jeff Bridges. Because The Dude, abiding in the “Seventh Son,” is apparently one-upping Brando. The Dude hammeth it up and phoneth it in, outrageously.
You’ve simply never seen such flat-out bad acting from Jeff Bridges. It almost feels like a dare: “Let me just see how bad I can be, without anyone calling me on it.”
Bridges plays Master Gregory, a Wild Bill Hickok-looking “Spook.” The Spooks are a group of witch-hunting knights, of which he’s the last living member of a once-robust order.
Bridges reaches into his grab bag of nutty ways of speaking and unpacks an amalgamation of over-the-top speech mannerisms and facial contortions from previous films such as “Crazy Heart,” “True Grit,” and “R.I.P.D.”
Gregory’s nemesis is a witch named Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore), with whom he had an early fling. Apparently that’s a thing: a Spook-and-witch fling.
