When the Brothers Grimm wrote "Hansel and Gretel" probably thought normal that some, in the future, would remake their fairytale in variations. As it indeed happened. What they never imagined was that the two poor siblings would sometime become Marvel Comics heroes. They also never thought that they would tour the world wiping it out of witches, likewise a medieval "Men in Black" duo.
"Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hungers" would have been a moderate dark comedy along with noteworthy photography, well designed costumes and well made special effects, if it didn't ruin the respectable fairytale, if it had a bit wider plot, if the director was less bored, if, if, if...
In a regular German village the residents are about to lynch a pretty girl because they take her for a witch that kidnapped a bunch of kids. As they're smart as well, they feel no need to ask her where she hid them before they kill her. Fortunately, Hawkeye - Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and his sister Gretel (Gemma Arterton) the witch bounty hunters come in and save the girl, and the day.
In their leather, Matrix-wise costumes and the futuristic retro weapons, the two Witch Hunters are unleashed into the Germanic woods, where they decapitate, blow up or burn in a Tarantino-style whatever witch they bump on. Blood scenes can be funny, feebly grotesque and look like daily Xena chores. Heat rises a bit when the star villain appears, who's no other than Jean Grey in the role of the grand evil witch Muriel (Famke Janssen). Far from annihilating them as the Phoenix would do, she manages merely to intimidate them with her super-ugly zombie witch face.
Gretel then, the smart of the two siblings, discovers Muriel's plan to slaughter 12 children during the upcoming Sabbath - the era's international witch ritual conference - in order to create a magic potion that will grant the witches immunity to fire. Even though this is presented as a disaster, historically it's rather inaccurate; medieval history tells us that people used to kill alleged witches in the... traditional way before they burn them. So Muriel's potion will be actually pissing against the wind here.
 
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To our surprise, the story takes us to the house Hansel and Gretel lived when they were little, only to conveniently tell us that their parents left them in the woods because peasants were about to kill their father and witch-mother Adrianna. The fact Adrianna was a grand white witch allows us to happily moralize their past.
Even for a b-movie I think that to divide witches into good and bad, white and not white, is a convenient but simplistic choice that shows the film-makers were too damn bored to think a little more on it.
Despite the original staging in Europe and the music with Hans Zimmer's touch, the film exploits the legendary title of the fairy-tale to attract attention and use its ready base for a plot. Which it rapes quite relentlessly later. Tradition wants this tale to associate with social issues of the times it was written, such as the Great Famine, poverty and deprivation. That's why Hansel's mom was in fact a bitch, or a bitch stepmom, wishing to kick the kids out, not to save them but to get rid of them! The past doesn't always pair with heroism, as we have got used to in the modern American culture.
I wouldn't slam this film for the inaccuracies or the alterations of the fairy-tale, but for the total changing of its meaning. Director Tommy Wirkola made his own "Hansel & Gretel" wasting in 2 hours a) the respective title by Grimm Brothers, b) the hero-type Hawkeye & Jean have built, and c) the mystical theme of witches and sorcery, on which he could have created a much more powerful movie.
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