In present-day Manhattan, he lives in relatively comfortable torment in a plush Upper East Side loft, seducing the occasional air stewardess and accepting international witch-hunting assignments from a succession of priestly advisors known as Dolans. He looks good on it, though, even if the on-trend locks are swiftly sacrificed for Diesel’s standard minimalist coiffure. Not before she afflicts him with the curse of immortality, however, thus consigning him to a lonely life of winnowing out her mangy kind, haunted by the memory of his long-perished wife and daughter. Luckily, Kaulder - sporting a braided beard and luscious undercut that would not be out of place in contemporary Williamsburg - has our backs, wasting the Queen in a murky introductory battle. It’s probably unwise to demand more detailed a milieu from a film that claims the Black Death plague of 1346-53 was in fact foisted upon humanity by a vindictive Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht, or what’s left of her beneath a maggoty digital mask) bent on total human eradication. And if it’s hard to buy the star as a 14th-century soldier of the Catholic Church, earnestly slaying sorceresses for 700 years without a wrinkle to show for it, the screenplay (bearing evident redrafting scars from a trio of scribes) doesn’t make much of an effort to sell the idea.įor starters, it’s uncertain where our noble witch-hunter, Kaulder, actually comes from: Based on scant evidence in the pre-credit prologue, let’s say it’s the little-remembered European land of Snowsylvania, though eight centuries has been long enough for him to adopt Diesel’s trademark gravelly drawl. Barring an early (and swiftly discarded) reference to his character’s prowess as a ladies’ man, there’s precious little room here for Diesel’s lunkish, slightly self-parodic streak of humor. Yet if its aim is to reposition him as a solo action star, perhaps re-engaging the dwindling audience for the “Riddick” films, this new vehicle doesn’t really play to his strengths - despite being developed and co-produced by the actor himself. Despite a pre-Halloween release date, the pic is more gung-ho than gooseflesh-inclined in genre either way, it’s unlikely to mint the franchise threatened by its eminently welcome ending.Ĭommercially, given the extraordinary expanding cultural impact of the “Fast and Furious” series, “The Last Witch Hunter” might expect to ride on Diesel fumes to an extent. Too drab to succeed even as defiantly unvirtuous trash, this era-stradding tale of an immortal medieval warrior protecting modern-day New York from a Black Death reboot stifles Diesel’s rough-hewn charisma via a sludgy, impermeable oil spill of CGI effects - in the service of largely unspectacular hocus pocus. Fast and furious on the surface, shallow and conventional beneath, Diesel’s bid to carve himself another billion-dollar franchise is off to a good start with this mainstream crowd-pleaser.One of the trickier tasks Vin Diesel’s eponymous hero faces in “ The Last Witch Hunter” is tracking a villain by his signature scent of “moldering crabapples” - a distinctive enough fragrance in its own right, but hard to separate from the generally funky aroma of decomposition that permeates Breck Eisner’s limp, lame-brained occult thriller. Steve Jablonsky‘s ever-present, over-insistent orchestral score also grates on the nerves before long.
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Less impressively, Eisner’s movie is clogged with cardboard characters, flat dialogue and a sluggish middle act that gets lost in too much fabricated witchy folklore. A couple of late plot twists also feel refreshingly left-field, even if they are shameless signposts for future sequels. In its favor, The Last Witch Hunter boasts some terrific production design and digital effects, notably the Witch Queen’s lair and a creature called the Sentinel, both nightmarish pagan constructions of shape-shifting wood and bone. Still, having such a wooden lead playing such a one-dimensional hero definitely makes it less appealing for casual movie goers. In fairness, these limitations are unlikely to deter the movie’s action-fan target demographic. In The Last Witch Hunter, he acts opposite an immobile corpse and a wooden tree monster, yet still somehow manages to be stiffer than both. But more recently he seems to have settled comfortably into Steven Segal mode, a walking bag of boiled ham whose expressive range barely extends beyond sleepy-eyed, guttural grunts. All smirk and bicep, he was once earmarked as the natural successor to Bruce Willis. The one truly impressive thing about Diesel’s acting skills is how he has achieved so much with so little.