Clearly aiming to be the first chapter in a big-budget action franchise, Vin Diesel's latest star vehicle is a supernatural thriller that proves to be as good as it needs to be, but no more.
The Last Witch Hunter methodically ticks a checklist of fan-friendly boxes, from its heavy dependence on visual effects to its international cast of fantasy genre veterans including Michael Caine, Elijah Wood and Game of Thrones alum Rose Leslie.
Producing as well as starring, the 47-year-old Diesel casts himself in an indestructible hero whose immortal status recalls previous blockbuster folklore reboots like Highlander, Blade and Underworld.
The director is Breck Eisner, son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who struggles to wring much sense or wit from an overcooked script that is more mythological than logical.
Diesel stars as Kaulder, a wild-haired grieving father cursed with immortality by the Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht) who unleashed the Black Death on mankind way back in the Middle Ages, killing his wife and daughter. Strikingly shot in a vast snowy wilderness, this origin story opens the movie and later becomes a recurring motif in flashback.
Fast-forward 800 years to present-day New York (mostly Pittsburgh standing in) and Kaulder is now a cleanshaven, bullet-headed, sharp-dressed witch hunter working for a shadowy organization called the Axe and Cross, which appears to be a secret paramilitary wing of the Catholic church.
Though a fragile centuries- old truce keeps most witches from meddling in human affairs, some nefarious necromantics still break the rules. That sets the stage for an apocalyptic second showdown between Kaulder and an evil nemesis.
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. But it's also clogged with cardboard characters, flat dialogue and a sluggish middle act that gets lost in too much fabricated witchy folklore.
Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter
The Last Witch Hunter (C)
Directed by Breck Eisner. PG-13 (sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images). 99 mins. In wide release.
