The Last Witch Hunter

I have a confession to make: I love Vin Diesel movies. It’s a love completely devoid of irony or mockery, instead occupying that rare sort of love based almost entirely on simply seeing an actor doing anything. I just like watching Vin Diesel. It’s a similar love to the one I have for Nicolas Cage, or Bruce Campbell or Kurt Russell. The movies could be crap (and, in many cases, mostly are), but I just get a genuine joy in seeing them in action. Drive Angry is awful, but Nic Cage having fully clothed sex with a random woman as he kills evil cultists, shotgun in one hand and booze in the other, is amazing. The only reason I watched Sky High was for the cameo roles by Kurt Russell and Bruce Campbell (I ended up liking the movie actually). But there’s always been something about Vin Diesel. There’s something so peculiar about a man whose body shape can only be described as bulbous starring in so many movies about how tough he is. Think about it. He turned a character from an indie sci-fi/horror movie into the basis for a movie series, a cartoon and two videos games, all dedicated to how much of a badass he is. That takes dedication.

A Vin Diesel movie doesn’t have to do that much to get my approval; it just has to be fun. I like the Chronicles of Riddick movies (even though I’m instinctively against anything that uses the word ‘Chronicles’ in the title), the last couple of Fast and Furious movies have been genuinely great fun and I like the ridiculousness of XXX. If anything the criteria for whether I like a Vin Diesel film is simple: just be better than Babylon AD. Yes, Babylon AD, the dull mess of a Vin Diesel vehicle with a shoot plagued/cursed with issues and misfortunes, supposedly gutted from its directors self-important ‘transcendental’ dystopian sci-fi narrative vision into a desperately edited, sloppy, slipshod action movie where almost nothing happens, the entire experience completely devoid of joy and humour. With criteria so low it’d seem that it wouldn’t take much to please me. Unfortunately ‘The Last Witch Hunter isn’t up to snuff. It’s not as bad as Babylon AD, nowhere near as bad, but it’s nowhere near a good movie. It’s just a boring one.

In the middle ages, gruff witch hunter Kaulder is sent to kill the Witch Queen who has unleashed the black plague and killed thousands. Kaulder is able to kill the Queen, but with her dying breath she curses him with eternal life so that he’ll be forced to see everybody he knows and loves die as he lives on. In the present day some eight hundred years later, an ageless, mellow Kaulder polices the world of witches and warlocks, preferring to imprison evil witches instead of killing them. He acts as the ‘weapon’ for ‘the Hammer and Cross’, an organisation that exists to keep peace between the human world and the witch world, hunting down rogue witches. Through the years he’s always aided by a Dolan, a priest tasked with recording his deeds.

When his only close friend and retiring confidant, the 36th Dolan (Michael Caine), is cursed by a witch, Kaulder has only a few days to track down the witch responsible and lift the curse. He’s aided initially by his new Dolan, the 37^th (Elijah Wood), and eventually by Chloe, a young witch with dream-based abilities (played by Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie). As their investigation gets dangerous and closer to the truth, Kaulder discovers dark witch forces are conspiring to revive the Witch Queen, and only he can stop them. 

It’s not an action movie. You wouldn’t know it from the trailers, but The Last Witch Hunter is actually, of all things, a ‘Men in Black’ movie. It has all the elements – a secret organisation tasked with policing a secret world of unhuman beings, headquarters in a nondescript place with all sorts of strange gadgets and tools, secret stores, clubs or communities full of otherworldly residents and a villainous plot in which some great evil was threatening the world. It also has a lot of investigating – in fact the movie is almost entirely comprised of investigating. Kaulder and whatever sidekick he happens to have at that moment head to a location, meet a character (usually a witch) and then some sort of magic will happen and he’ll discover a clue or a vital piece of information that’ll take him to the next location to investigate. The movie continues like this for a long time; almost it’s entire middle.

So it’s a movie that drags. After a rough but promising initial fifteen minutes it becomes clear that the plot is in no rush to go anywhere or do anything. It’s less a case of slamming the brakes on and more a case of the top speed being sub-40. It’s less an issue of being lost and more an issue of not actually having a destination. Clumsy, nonsensical driving metaphors aside, the movie’s slow pace is a combination of poor design and poor ideas. It has no ambition, scope or scale; it’s a very small movie with small ideas for the large world building it seems to want to build. It’s also a movie so determined to keep a status quo that in its final moments it relents and renders everything that happened meaningless.

Vin Diesel tends to play a very similar tough guy character in his movies, with the only difference really being how hard of an edge he has. That edge sits on a sort of scale, with violent criminal Richard B. Riddick on one end, and the caring bodyguard from kid’s film The Pacifier on the other, while in the middle sits Fast and the Furious’ tough guy Dominic Toretto. Despite the character’s reputation as a witch killer, Kaulder sits somewhere between the latter two, with his character basically being a great big pussycat of a tough guy. The glimpses of past Kaulder, with his Viking beard and flaming sword, show a much more badass character we never see in the rest of the film. Instead Kaulder comes across as a bit of a dumb softie, ~

Elijah Wood is weak as Kaulder’s new Dolan, basically filling the sidekick role for the first half an hour of the film and then disappearing until the very end where, an inexplicable heel turn later, he’s revealed to be one of the villains (it’s a spoiler, but it honestly comes from nowhere and is ultimately meaningless). Why does Elijah Wood just take crap roles in weak movies? Did Lord of the Rings really nosedive his career that much? The bulk of the movie is instead spent with Chloe, a character who, while infused with a little spunk, spends a lot of time talking to Kaulder about things that aren’t important. It’s mostly there to take the place of ‘character development’, a concept the film struggles with. So instead of meaningful plot developments or character growth we get Kaulder being lectured on how not all witches are bad, Chloe revealing her meaningless witchy secrets, Kaulder’s past being briefly mentioned (the flashbacks to his long-dead family are constant) and just idle chat. Michael Caine is fun in his few short scenes, giving the tiny role more humour and effort than the film deserves. The villains are routinely villainous. While the Witch Queen is bland and forgettable (being evil is her only personality trait), most of the film is spent pursuing a heavy set, bearded Romanian-looking man who is neither threatening nor interesting. Even the ancillary characters are completely forgettable.

For somebody cursed with eternal life, forced to see his friends and family die as he lives on, Kaulder really doesn’t seem to care. He’s not brooding or distant, he’s positively jolly, gleefully seducing air hostesses (apparently he flies a lot), harassing witches and being chummy with Michael Caine. It really takes the edge out of the film’s finale (more on that later), especially since ~ For somebody said to be a powerful Witch Hunter, who has earnt himself the nickname of ‘The Weapon’, Kaulder is actually a big pansy. He’s either being beaten up, knocked down, flung across the room, shot, stabbed or, the most ridiculous one, hypnotised. Every other scene the supposedly big muscled (but small brained) Kaulder ends up stuck in a memory or a dream. For somebody the witches have struggled to defeat for hundreds of years he’s so weak.

The action scenes suck. While the action itself is as generic and poorly choreographed as can be (honestly Nic Cage’s ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ did magic battles better), the problem is how they’re shot – they’re either far too dark or involve blinding flashes of light. Most action scenes occur in dark indoor areas like caves or apartments, and almost all involve lightning or thunderstorms, magical or otherwise. That means it’s alternatively too dark to make out what’s happening and then too bright to see anything. The effect outright hurt my eyes and made it hard to enjoy the very limp action. While the opening, with a grizzled Kaulder wielding a flaming sword and stabbing ugly fly-spewing witches, suggests we’re in for a pretty cool witch-killing time, it’s not indicative of the rest of the movie at all. In fact I’d say past Kaulder’s scenes come from an almost completely different movie, with a harder, more violent edge to the PG13 weakness of the rest of the movie. It’s like a scene from a much better movie, still not amazing but at least a potentially fun one. Every present-day action scene is weak, and almost non-existent, usually involving a witch using a spell to trick Kaulder or to simply fling him across the room. It must also be said that the film’s tone is surprisingly light and almost comedic, with Kaulder and co cracking wise more often than brooding.

The film has a pretty boring look all things considered. While I mentioned The Sorcerer’s Apprentice before, it actually looks and feels a lot like that movie, with its New York setting – there’s only so much you can do with ‘Manhattan with magic’ as a premise. The CGI effects are, at least, pretty decent for this sort of movie. While there is some unconvincing nonsense (evil witch roots look silly), the magical rune effects look pretty good. Witches have a shiny glint in their eyes when casting spells and some of the big stuff is ok. There’s a giant golem made out of skeletons that is pretty cool when you see it (though it’s fought mostly in darkness). The Witch Queen herself is pretty disappointing, basically being an ugly woman with wrinkly, plant-like skin. She’s not frightening or memorable as a villain. The most memorable effects would be the CGI for a newly immortal Kaulder after having just killed the Witch Queen. He looks like a horribly burnt zombie, writhing in pain. It’s pretty cool, but also feels much darker and violent compared to the rest of the movie.

The movie is determined to keep a status quo for a sequel that has no way in hell of ever being made. The ending is what completely ruins it. It was already a bad, disappointing movie, but the end completely killed it for me. I have to spoil it a bit, but let’s get to the point – Kaulder’s immortality is tied to the Witch Queen’s heart. As long as the heart still beats, the Queen can still be revived, and Kaulder lives forever. To truly defeat her and stop her evil forever, the heart must be stabbed, which will also kill Kaulder. At the end Kaulder is poised to stab the heart and kill himself and the Witch Queen. Chloe begs him not to, with a combination of ‘I love you!’ and ‘there’s a bigger evil out there that will be revealed in a sequel and you’re the only one who can stop it!’. Kaulder has to make his choice. At this point one wonders whether it’ll do a Highlander (i.e. Kaulder loses his immortality but becomes super powerful), or if True Love and the Ultimate Sacrifice will allow him to remain immortal. Or, if we’re going to go rough, maybe he’d just die but all evil would be eliminated?

We get none of this, because Kaulder just doesn’t stab the damn heart. The heart itself has been a massive point of contention in the plot, being the source of several betrayals, the central MacGuffin, the tool of ultimate evil and the only way Kaulder can win and end the evil once and for all, and the idiot decides to keep it so he can be immortal. This is basically the sort of thing the villain would do – this is the equivalent of that Nazi broad in The Last Crusade keeping the Holy Grail. The entire sequence also doesn’t work because the Kaulder we see in the film is perfectly fine being immortal. He’s happy that he can’t die and seems to enjoy the life he’s lead, so it make zero sense for him to want to kill himself.

So the movie ends at the same point as where it began. Nobody has changed, nobody has undergone any growth, the evil witches are still out there, the Witch Queen is still a threat that can return and Kaulder is still immortal. It’s the narrative equivalent of ‘it was all a dream’, essentially making the entire film pointless and not changing anything. This would have been forgivable if the journey itself was worth taking, but The Last Witch Hunter is just a bad movie all up. It’s just so overwhelmingly dull, with barely any action or movement and a lot of dull busywork as characters just wonder around and don’t do much at all. It’s as bad as it was expected to be, which is a shame. One does have to wonder why nobody can seem to make a good movie about witches.