Vin Diesel has the Riddick franchise and of course the Fast and Furious franchise. With the release of The Last Witch Hunter, Diesel is trying to start another series of films that features the superstar at the center. Unfortunately, we doubt that The Last Witch Hunter will exist beyond this first installment.
Diesel plays Kaulder, a man we first meet in medieval times as part of a witch-hunting posse searching for the root of a coven that is causing horrors across their land. They track down the source to a tree where the witches reside and in the process of battling one, she curses Kaulder with eternal life. So, what’s a guy to do? Do what you love and know how to do best, right? So, he battles witches right up until we meet him in modern times.
Kaulder in today’s world is a man with a certain amount of swagger, which surely comes from centuries of living and being the best at your given field. He has the support of the church as a priest serves as his aide and carries the name Dolan. Michael Caine is Dolan 36 and he is retiring and making way for Dolan 37, who is portrayed by Elijah Wood.
Caine and Diesel’s chemistry is top notch, actually. One can see that, even though Diesel is centuries older than Caine, Dolan 36 is a father figure to Kaulder and they are close. They have shared many battles together ensuring the world stays safe while witches are still roaming the earth. The same night that Dolan 36 retires, he is murdered, and Dolan 37 and Kaulder believe that it is the work of the same witch that our witch hunter supposedly killed all those centuries ago that gave him his fateful curse.
Breck Eisner directs the film and does a fair job of balancing the flashbacks from medieval times and the action of today, but the script fails him and everyone involved with its overdose of exposition. Sure, we get it, this is a potential franchise set-up and needs to be an origins story. But for a story about a witch hunter, there is not a whole lot of witch hunting going on.
There’s even a subplot of a witch named Chloe (Rose Leslie) who comes to aid Kaulder and Dolan 37 in their battle against the evilest of witches. Leslie is fantastic, but again, she is not given much to work with. She and Diesel make a great team and we can see that there is potential for a future with these two battling witches in future movies, but we doubt they will even get that chance.
Because of the lack of witch hunting in this witch hunter movie, the plot and the pacing truly drag. There is not much that the team does other than go from site to site searching for the source of the scourge that is supposedly terrorizing New York City. See, that’s another problem. We know that if this witch returns to the form she once had when Diesel first killed her, the cost would be potentially world-ending. Yet the audience is never given that full scope.
All the terror seems to be in a self-contained world of witches and witch hunters. No one else seems to be feeling the wrath of these evildoers, and therefore, it is hard for us to cheer for Kaulder and his team because we’re not sure they’re saving anyone but themselves.
Grade: C-