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 The film, which opens in U.S. theaters on Valentine's Day, is
based on Mark Helprin's 1983 fantasy novel of the same name, and
stars Golden Globe winner Colin Farrell ("In Bruges") as a
burglar who falls in love with an heiress played by English
actress Jessica Brown Findlay, of TV's Downton Abbey.
Set in the early 1900s in a mythical New York with cobble-stone
streets, stately mansions and thieving street gangs and also in
the present, "Winter's Tale" is a romance that transcends time
with magical elements such as a flying white horse and a hero
who exists for 100 years without aging.
"This is a fairy tale for grown-ups," said first-time director Akiva Goldsman, who won an Oscar in 2002 for best screenplay for
"A Beautiful Mind."
"It is a wink and a nod to people who have had loss and need to
believe in magic," he added.
Goldsman, 51, fell in love with the critically acclaimed novel,
but he admits magical realism is a genre that will not appeal to
everyone.
"It is the coexistence of serious dramatic scenes and a flying
white horse," he said, "That is either delightful to you or
aversive. To me it has always been something of an art form."
But critics failed to find the magic in the film released by
Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros. unit.
"Oblique, unstructured and demented, 'Winter's Tale' aims to
cast a dreamlike spell but it more like a nightmare," said the
New York Observer.
The trade journal Variety found it "a cloying
sledgehammer-subtle adaptation of Mark Helprin's vastly richer
novel," while The Hollywood Reporter said "aspiring transcendent
love stories don't come much more claptrappy and unconvincing."
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 "Winter's Tale" is expected to earn $15 million at
U.S. and Canadian theaters over the weekend, according to
Boxoffice.com.
BATTLE OF GOOD AND EVIL
Farrell, 37, leads an all-star cast of Oscar winners, including
Russell Crowe ("Gladiator") as an evil gang leader and William Hurt
("Kiss of the Spider Woman"), who plays a wealthy newspaper editor
and protective father. Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind") is a
modern-day journalist and Eva Marie Saint ("On the Waterfront")
plays her boss, Hurt's adult daughter.
"Winter's Tale" pits Farrell's Peter Lake against his former mentor
Pearly Soames, the crime boss played by Crowe, 49, in a battle of
good and evil played out over a 100 years.
While Lake is being pursued by Soames and his gang, he robs a
mansion where he meets and instantly falls in love with Beverly
Penn, a beautiful young heiress dying of tuberculosis.
"One of the cruxes and the bedrock of this film is the presence of a
love that defies linear time and the eternal existence of something
that is felt and can't be defined," Farrell told Reuters in a
interview.
(Editing by Mary Milliken and Cynthia
Osterman)
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