Vin Diesel is not the most expressive of actors. This is pretty much irrefutable as evidenced by most of his filmography. However, if films like Pitch Black and the recent Fast & Furios 7 have proven anything, it’s that Diesel can, with the right mix of a decent script, good co-stars and a strong conceptual backbone, turn in a worthwhile, even necessary performance. His latest outing, The Last Witch Hunter, has all of these core elements intact. Diesel is at the forefront but is backed up by Elijah Wood, Michael Caine and former Game of Thrones actress Rose Leslie in a story about millennia old elemental magic, witch hunting and a seedy supernatural underworld us regular humans are blissfully unaware of. It’s a tried and tested formula that should work for all parties. Yet, The Last Witch Hunter succeeds in only one aspect: being mediocre.
Playing the titular hunter of witches, Vin Diesel is Kaulder, a warrior cursed with immortality after managing to kill the witch queen several hundred years ago. Now a modern day seasoned witch destroyer, Kaulder is known as ‘The Weapon’ amongst magical folk as he works to keep the world safe from magic-users who wish to do it harm. Kaulder answers to two entities; a council made up of witches who work with him to imprison dissident magic users and a scribe assigned to watch over and document his life’s journey known as Father Dolan (Michael Caine). After Father Dolan is incapacitated in a hit and run, Kaulder finds himself up against a fiendish attempt to resurrect the Witch Queen and once again unleash a black plague upon the Earth.
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Born out of a common love of Dungeons & Dragons between Diesel and screenwriter Cory Goodman, The Last With Hunter is like a cross-section of Blade, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Highlander and Constantine, with some other classical fantasy elements in the film’s lore and history. It’s not really meant to be an original story so much as a tribute to simple, spirited fantasy story-telling. After Father Dolan is taken out, Elijah Wood‘s 37th Dolan is brought in to help Kaulder, while witch barmaid Chloe, played by Rose Leslie, finds herself forced into the ruckus after her life is shattered by the evil witch who is trying to eliminate Kaulder. Anyone who’s watched any of the aforementioned films, or read or seen any other action fantasy story will find these story beats well-trodden and predictable, but that’s not the film’s issue. No, the film’s problem is less to do with content and more to do with tone and pacing.
The predictability of The Last Witch Hunter feels pretty purposeful with the nerdy fanboy roots at its core – this is a fantasy film being made by classical fantasy fans who want to have some fun with these fantasy tropes on the big screen. Not an issue in a climate that’s currently bountiful with superhero films. But there’s an odd dissonance at play with how the film is executed in that it can’t seem to decide how dark it wants to be because it always wants to get to through the next scene, right up to the end. There’s certainly some very dark moments in here – Chloe’s apartment gets haunted in a scene reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver‘s groceries sequence in Ghostbusters and there’s a repeated theme of dream and memory-walking that repeatedly sent shivers down my spine – but throughout the entire film, The Last Witch Hunter always feels like it’s verging on a darker, better movie, like it’s holding back.
The action set-pieces don’t feel long enough nor do the character backstories deep enough and the last act, which is chock full of cool ideas, is just rushed along with a climactic exchange that isn’t given anywhere near the brevity it needs to feel meaningful. We’re given only small glimpses of the magical rules that make up this world, too vague to really garner a legitimate curiosity. Rose Leslie‘s Chloe is particularly short-changed, her “dream-walking” abilities pivotal to the final stretch but unexplored overall. A lack of slow down to explain abilities is fine, show don’t tell, but if the film doesn’t tell us, then it should show us with more scenes dedicated to particular characters and powers that aren’t necessarily driving the main plotline. Without this world-building, the film seems like it doesn’t care about its own story and mythos, and if it doesn’t care, why should we?
I’m not entirely sure where it all went wrong for The Last Witch Hunter because, frankly, a pulpy fantasy action number with a guy wielding a flaming sword is, and will hopefully always be a byline to a good time. Somewhere along the way though, something just didn’t click. Maybe the script needed one more go around, maybe director Breck Eisner just wasn’t quite in tune with the fantasy stylings Diesel and Goodman were going. I don’t know. What I do know is that, despite all the good intentions, the film is nothing more than another deflated could’ve been.
Hopefully The Actual Last Witch Hunter
