Winter's Tale

Winter's Tale (released in the United Kingdom and Ireland as A New York Winter's Tale) is a 2014 American romantic fantasy film based on the 1983 novel Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin. The film is written, produced and directed by Akiva Goldsman (in his directorial debut). It stars Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Eva Marie Saint (in her final film role before retirement), Russell Crowe and Will Smith. Winter's Tale premiered at London on February 13 and was theatrically released on February 14 in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film has received negative reviews and became a box office bomb, grossing only $30.8 million on a $75 million budget. It also received a Golden Trailer nomination for Best Romance Poster. Plot In 1895, a young immigrant couple is refused entry into Manhattan because they have consumption (Tuberculosis). When their infant son is not allowed entry to the country without them, the family is forced to return to their ship named City of Justice. The parents break the display case containing a model of the ship and place their baby inside it on the water, then watch him float to the New York City shoreline. In 1916, the baby boy has grown up to become Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), a thief raised by a supernatural demon posing as the gangster Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe). Peter is marked for death when he decides to leave Pearly's gang. In a confrontation, he is rescued by a mysterious (winged at times) white horse, his guardian angel. Although Peter hopes to move to Florida and come back in the summer, the horse encourages him to steal from one last mansion. The mansion is the home where Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay) lives, a young woman dying of consumption, whose fever is so high she sleeps outside in a tent in the winter cold. While her publisher father Isaac (William Hurt) and younger sister Willa are not home, Beverly discovers Peter preparing to rob the house. When Peter assures her that he no longer wishes to commit robbery, Beverly offers to make him a cup of tea. They tell each other their stories and fall in love. Pearly orders his men to Beverly's home, believing that saving her is Peter's "miracle" and spiritual destiny and that he can destroy Peter by preventing it. Peter rescues Beverly from being knifed by Pearly, and they escape to the Lake of the Coheeries, where Pearly, who is supernaturally limited to the five boroughs of New York City, cannot follow.