The Last Witch Hunter (2015) (English Language)

Review

106min

Genre:    Fantasy, Action, Adventure

Director: Breck Eisner

Cast:      Vin Diesel, Rose Leslie, Michael Caine…and more

Writers:  Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama & Burk Sharpless

-Synopsis-

Vin Diesel stars as a 12th Century warrior turned immortal witch-hunter who’s spent 800 years keeping the peace between humans and those with dark powers. Now in 21st Century New York, he must again fight the dark resurrected menace that cursed him with eternal life and now threatens humanity.

If ‘The Last Witch Hunter’ seems familiar to you it’s because we’ve seen it all before in any number of modern vampire narratives, just replace vampires with witches and vampire slayer with witch hunter. Think ‘The Lord of the Rings’ meets ‘Blade’ but without the narrative and visionary brilliance of the former, or the originality and cool factor of the latter.

Director Breck Eisner attempts to craft a dark but family friendly contemporary all-action fantasy by combining a well-trodden narrative and mild horror with plenty of CGI and spectacular magic imagery, plus convenient religious iconography and a dash of ineffectively mixed humour & drama.

The result, although entertaining enough, is a mess that fails to impress or engage despite the efforts of its star, who’s now exhausted “Fast & Furious” charms don’t add layers to the stereotypically badass but shallow character “Kaulder”, and no amount strategically placed dead family flashbacks will convince you otherwise.

Diesel’s co-stars Rose Leslie and Elijah Wood do their best with pedestrian modernist fantasy dialogue, but even Michael Caine in his now customary mentor/confidant role can’t save the characters in ‘The Last Witch Hunter’ from drowning in the frenzied action and convoluted narrative.

With impressive action set pieces and striking visuals and with a duration of just shy of 2 hours, ‘The Last Witch Hunter’ is not entirely without merit as fantastical escapist entertainment. No doubt its producers will be hoping they’ve found a Vin Diesel vehicle off which they can build a franchise, and with many of the mass appeal modern components for success there we won’t be surprised if this is the first of many “Kaulder” films.

The Bottom Line…

Fun, flashy but forgettable, ‘The Last Witch Hunter’ walks a very familiar cinematic path without offering anything much to remember it by, a reasonably entertaining way to burn a couple of hours which you’ll forget as soon as you leave the cinema… that is until the inevitable sequels.

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Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Blade (1998)

A vampire-slaying “Daywalker”, half-vampire himself, must protect us mere mortals from a powerful rogue vampire hell-bent on leading his race to supremacy on Earth leaving humanity as nothing but food in this high octane action/horror starring Wesley Snipes.

Directed by Stephen Norrington and starring Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff and Kris Kristofferson among others.

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