Last Witch Hunter, The (2015) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Fantasy

Tagline: Live forever. Hunt forever.

Vin Diesel is Kaulder, an immortal witch hunter who has spent centuries tracking down those who practice evil magic. When history's deadliest witches resurrect their bloodthirsty Queen Witch, Kaulder becomes humanity's last hope as he clashes with the supernatural in an epic battle for the ages.

Storyline: The modern world holds many secrets, but the most astounding secret of all is that witches still live amongst us; vicious supernatural creatures intent on unleashing the Black Death upon the world. Armies of witch hunters battled the unnatural enemy across the globe for centuries, including Kaulder, a valiant warrior who managed to slay the all-powerful Queen Witch, decimating her followers in the process. In the moments right before her death, the Queen curses Kaulder with her own immortality, forever separating him from his beloved wife and daughter in the afterlife. Today Kaulder is the only one of his kind remaining, and has spent centuries hunting down rogue witches, all the while yearning for his long-lost loved ones. However, unbeknownst to Kaulder, the Queen Witch is resurrected and seeks revenge on her killer causing an epic battle that will determine the survival of the human race. Written by Lionsgate

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 26, 2016 His character's name isn't Alfred this time around, but Michael Caine really might have thought he was signing up for another iteration of The Dark Knight Trilogy for all intents and purposes in The Last Witch Hunter. While not a butler per se, Caine's character of Dolan (more properly the 36th Dolan, but more about that later) is an avuncular elder who tends to a mysterious superhero who is tasked with keeping various nefarious baddies out of a Manhattan metropolis which (again, for all intents and purposes) might as well be called Gotham. Caine is perhaps luckily shunted off to the sidelines for much of The Last Witch Hunter, a "high concept" offering that is so high (in a manner of speaking) it requires not just an explanatory prologue, but then an additional post-prologue voiceover by none other than Caine himself to further explicate some salient plot points. The bottom line is that Vin Diesel portrays a Middle Ages warrior named Kaulder who, in that aforementioned prologue, is part of a feudal team tasked with taking out a nasty witch who has unleashed the "Black Plague" (as they call it) on the populace. The Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht), who will perhaps remind some science fiction fans of another queen, namely the royal Borg played by Alice Krige in Star Trek VIII: First Contact, engages in some hocus pocus that mesmerizes various other combatants, leading to a showdown between herself and Kaulder. Kaulder has plans to kill both the Queen and himself in one epic move, since Kaulder like all good heroes (super and/or otherwise, but rather similarly to a certain Caped Crusader) is a wounded soul nursing the trauma of his family having been killed and has no reason to continue living. The Witch Queen is kind of a mean girl, though, and as she (supposedly) dies, reaches right into Kaulder's chest and "gifts" him with eternal life. Whew! And that's just the prologue, folks.

The post-prologue bulk of the film takes place in contemporary times, as the now (seemingly) ageless Kaulder has continued to keep witches in line down through the intervening centuries. For several hundred years, he's been working in tandem with a quasi-religious order known as The Axe and Cross, which is where the 36th Dolan comes in. Since Kaulder keeps on living, kind of like a witch obsessed Energizer bunny, he is in need of regular replacements in the assistant category, and The Axe and Cross has helpfully provided him with a line of such acolytes, all known as Dolan, with the appropriate number before their "name". The 36th Dolan is in fact preparing to retire as the film gets into its main storyline, and has told Kaulder that a new helper, the 37th Dolan (Elijah Wood), will soon be joining the "good fight".

The Last Witch Hunter shows signs of either having been tweaked in post or (perhaps even worse) having been put into production without a well thought out screenplay in place, for there are rather looming narrative gaps at play, even with those aforementioned explanatory gambits. Characters show up with absolutely no introduction or context, and the whole conceit of the film is never really adequately detailed, meaning viewers simply have to surrender to the haphazard presentation style and "go with the flow". The main plot mechanics surround the (supposed) murder of the 36th Dolan, something that sends Kaulder and the 37th Dolan out on a snark hunt to take down the witch who did the bad deed, something that in turn soon puts them in touch with a "dreamwalker" witch named Chloe (Rose Leslie), a move that sends the film careening off into Dreamscape territory.

There's a lot of interesting content in The Last Witch Hunter, but it's so chaotically offered that my hunch is only those who love bombastic soundtracks and lots of (admittedly quite inventive) special effects will find this compelling enough to sit through. There are a number of predictable "twists" (including one character "reveal" which is about as unsurprising as possible), but even putting that unfortunate tendency aside, the film simply never offers more than a sketch, rather than a fully completed illustration. Things probably would have worked better had that prologue included more information about Kaulder's long trek from feudal times to the 21st century, as well as a more solid explication of the whole "witches living among the humans" angle. Director Breck Eisner keeps things moving at a brisk pace, but the film is ultimately kind of a shambles.

Considering the blistering reviews The Last Witch Hunter received when it was first released (including by our own Brian Orndorf), I expected the film to be an absolute disaster. I was therefore at least somewhat surprised at how much of the film I actually enjoyed. A smarter, better structured screenplay could have solved a lot of the issues here, especially if just a little more time had been spent detailing Kaulder's transformation from feudal warrior to contemporary witch "enforcer". Too much is elided here to give the film any emotional resonance (not that it's aiming for any to begin with), leaving the plot just kind of frayed and ill defined feeling. The film is nonetheless often quite enjoyable from a purely visual and sonic standpoint, and so some folks may want to check it out for those reasons. Technical merits are very strong for those considering a purchase.

[CSW] -2.4- The plot was not very deep, in fact it was very shallow. It had some nice special effects, but was still a good B movie, something to watch if you have nothing else to do. Great actors roped into a so-so movie. Elijah Wood was so obvious that it made him a miscast for his role. It was nothing special and there was no special message delivered. It is one of those films that in a week you will have forgotten that you saw it. Bu it would watch it again on late night TV if for some reason I was still up.
[V4.5-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box


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