Review of The Last Witch Hunter (2015) by Dave M — 23 Oct 2015

Darned witches! Why can't they just leave us alone? For no apparent reason, a whole coven of them tormented a town full of bored teenage girls in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1692. (Come on, witches! Wasn't the fact that those girls had to wait another 200+ years for cell phones and Facebook torture enough??) Then, in 1900, a book documented how one witch kept bothering this poor little girl named Dorothy who just wanted to grab her dog and get back to Kansas. (Although, why someone would want to get BACK to Kansas, I'll never understand.) Then, in the late 20th century and early 21st century, all sorts of mean and evil witches kept getting in the way of that Harry Potter chap. (And all he wanted to do was make a few movies about his life, so he could move on and make some really bad movies.) You'd think that all this mischief and all the TV series that witches get to appear in these days would be enough for them, but NO, they have to try to destroy the whole human race! At least, that's the set-up for 2015's Vin Diesel probable franchise-launching "The Last Witch Hunter" (PG-13, 1:46).

Diesel stars as the title character, a man named Kaulder. We don't know what his first name is, but let's just say it's Ron. It seems appropriate for a witch hunter, especially if he's listed last name first, in an alphabetized list of professional witch hunters. Well, that probably is a moot point, seeing as Kaulder is the LAST witch hunter. Although he looks young enough to drive a fast car parachuting from the back of an airplane, he's actually 800 years old (give or take). When he and a bunch of other rough-looking medieval swordsmen storm the lair of the Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht), Kaulder's flaming sword runs her through, but with her dying breath she curses him with her own immortality. Now, he's condemned to live alone and forever mourn the deaths of his wife and daughter. (He's a medieval hero, so, of course, someone has killed his wife and young child.) On the bright side, the Witch Queen's demise also ended her attempt to wipe out all of humanity with the infamous Black Plague.

Fast forward to present day New York City. Kaulder has outlived his fellow witch hunters by about 780 years (give or take) and it falls to him to keep the surviving witches' evil at bay. And he's been very successful. He has an aide, called a Dolan, specifically assigned to him by "The Order of the Axe and Cross", a secret group within the Catholic Church, which assists with and documents Kaulder's mission. As the movie opens, Dolan 36 (Michael Caine) is retiring and Dolan 37 (Elijah Wood) is set to succeed him. The night before the... Dolanizing ceremony, Dolan 36 is found dead. Kaulder considered 36 a good friend and suspects there is something more to his passing than the usual lack of immortality. He's right. With 37 at his side, Kaulder investigates the emergence of an evil he hasn't seen in... eight centuries.

This whole Dolan 36 murder mystery threatens to undermine a truce between witches and humans that has lasted since Kaulder vanquished the Witch Queen. Witches have lived among us since then and have been allowed to practice their dark arts, as long as they didn't use their magic on humans. Rather than try to hunt down and kill all witches, Kaulder has to focuses his efforts. (After all, how much can one person do? The man's 800 years old, for goodness sakes!) What he does is find rogue witches, especially those who break the rules of the truce, and delivers them to a council of witches who sentence the guilty to an eternal state of suspended animation. In this case, however, finding the offending witch won't be enough for Kaulder. He suspects that what's happening is much bigger than one bad witch trying to spoil the witches' brew. Kaulder teams up with a witch named Chloe (Rose Leslie) and they work together for the sake of both his people and her... kind. Along the way, we learn that Chloe is a witch with special powers that not all witches possess - and she's going to need all the powers that she can muster. Bubbling beneath the surface of this whole cauldron of discontent is a very dangerous secret and an even more dangerous conspiracy that could make for a really bad day for everybody.

"The Last Witch Hunter" is a very personal project for Diesel - and it shows - in both good ways and bad. This movie would have been out earlier, but filming was pushed back when production on "Furious 7" was delayed following Paul Walker's death. Kaulder is actually based on Diesel's own witch hunter character that he uses as an avid Dungeons and Dragons player. Unfortunately, for all Diesel's devotion to this project, his characterization of Kaulder feels a bit odd. Rather than giving us an understandably serious and tortured character who has his light moments, we get a man whose modern-day version seems too light-hearted, with all he's been through in his past and all he's dealing with in his present.

Aside from certain moments in Diesel's uneven performance, the rest of the movie's pretty entertaining. The little-known supporting cast is surprisingly good. I like the tie-in with actual historical events, but the progression of the story is vague. (It's probably Europe, but we don't really know where the big scene at the Witch Queen's headquarters takes place. And we never learn how or why Kaulder chose New York City for his current base of operations, or much else from the previous 800 years.) The story (a supernatural version of "Men in Black") and the action are very good and the visuals are great. I give this one a mild recommendation and predict that this will not be the last "Last Witch Hunter". "B".