"The Last Witch Hunter" Review

The Last Witch Hunter is a stubborn movie, steadfast in continuing long past the point where I stop caring. I can only assume the reason for this film making it to 106 minutes is because when the writers saw Goosebumps last week, where R.L. Stine (Jack Black) listed the basics of a great story as "the beginning, the middle, and the twist [pronounced tweeest]," they were inspired to cram in as many as possible, because of course, an ill-crafted, derivative script + fifteen movie-padding twists = profit. I should feel a tinge vindicated, as it looks like The Martian will take #1 in this weekend's box-office, but I don't feel any satisfaction, because no matter how hard history may condemn this flick to a Wal-Mart dollar bin, The Last Witch Hunter remains a blight on my streak of pleasant movie-going experiences, a complete and utter waste of time.

Vin Diesel plays Kaulder, the titular witch-hunter whose group of vikings is plagued (quite literally, it's the Black Death) by the Evil Queen (Julie Engelbrecht) and her legion of witches. The witches have killed Kaulder's wife and daughter; fueled by revenge, he finds and defeats the Queen, but not before she curses him to walk the Earth for eternity, unable to die and join his family in the afterlife.

Cut to modern day, and Kaulder is surprisingly well-adjusted. He uses iPads, drives fancy cars, and lives in a swanky bachelor pad, routinely seducing stewardess with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (the Wilhelm scream of soundtracks). Furthering the Batman comparisons, Kaulder's enlisted Alfred's help; Michael Caine plays his handler/mentor/historian/voice-over narrator, known as the 36th Dolan. Both Kaulder and the 36th Dolan are members of the Axe and Cross, a witch-hunting secret society. I keep mentioning 36th because there's a 37th Dolan (Elijah Wood); after the 36th is murdered, Kaulder and the nebbish 37th investigate, discovering a plot to revive the Evil Queen.

The film is cut from the same cloth as something like Van Helsing or Dracula Untold, and while at times, Diesel's silly, self-aware delivery can echo that B-movie feel, the script doesn't feel the same way. The script looks at Kaulder, sees he's the last of his kind, and immediately archetypes him as such, to where it'd be believable is Diesel were introspective, brooding over his fate, but he's not. He's having a blast, swinging around fire swords, tinkering with magic runes, squaring off against CGI rock spider monstrosities.

Wood and Caine are wasted here; Wood is tossed to the wayside, replaced by a good witch (Rose Leslie) who only becomes Kaulder's sidekick for eye-candy until the writers yank out a reason in the last third. Michael Caine is almost noticeably sleepwalking through this performance, recycling the Alfred voice and delivery, and while he and Diesel have decent chemistry, he's told to recite Razzie-worthy lines like "Look at you, you ugly bitch of a morning".

The movie hobbles between blurry computer-generated squabbles and long stretches of exposition, and at the end, tosses so many random plot threads and twists that it feels like extra punishment. I'm grounded for scoffing at the rock spider, so the film invents a reason to go on for ten minutes until I behave. Diesel plays his fantasy hero with sincerity, but he's the only one having fun. There are better titles available at Wal-Mart, skip this at all costs.

Thank you all for reading; I'm the Man Without a Plan, signing off.