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When the hobbit said he’s a muggle, I finally ran out of patience with The Last Witch Hunter. It’s at best a mash-up of ideas from everyplace else, with nothing to bind it together.
Vin Diesel is Kaulder, whose family was killed by a witch queen who lived not in New Orleans but in a Na’vi tree. Witches are some kind of alternate race who seem to have descended from Poison Ivy and who mixed with human beings like the Nephilim. He gets his revenge and immortality—but it’s hard to engage with Kaulder because he’s both all-knowing and a know-it-all.
He is assisted by Alfred—sorry, the 36th Dolan, played by Michael Caine. The Dolan is a priest who supports, is PA to, and writes Batman’s—sorry, Kaulder’s—personal history. Caine really is still Alfred, giving the same sort of advice with the same sort of pauses in his sentences.
He’s succeeded by the 37th Dolan, played by Elijah Wood. He is a stock new-guy character, the one who doesn’t know what’s going on and can’t defend himself. It’s a flat performance at best.
Meanwhile, the witch queen has released the Black Plague. She’s played by Julie Engelbrecht in what I’ll assume is a reasonable performance, but under all that makeup, she just hisses and shouts. She was hired to be an object, a prop, and that is what she is.
After 800 years, the world is in trouble again, and Kaulder has to go through the hidden world of the witches because, I guess, the vampires moved out. It’s just a collection of scenes that have been in other movies—including Roal Dahl’s Witches.
To save the world, Kaulder needs the help of Chloe, a witch who complains about how people perceive witches. Chloe makes no sense as a character. She’s determined and courageous until she takes a liking to Big Vin, and then she wimps out like a Hollywood Female Sidekick. She’s whatever plays off the person on the other side of the scene.
Chloe is played by Rose Leslie. And she, like Vin Diesel, has done better work before. But, in this case, the two have zero chemistry together. Ally against an enemy, maybe, but a romance? I don’t buy it.
This movie has gaps in the plot, thin characterization, and things that just aren’t explained. You’ll have no reason to care what happens to these people. The movie makes about that much sense. In the end, it sets the story up for a sequel—but, then again, so did Green Lantern.
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