It helps to think of “The Last Witch Hunter” as a paranormal police procedural. Set in New York City, as cop shows often are, it’s a story of a brooding investigator (Vin Diesel) trying to solve a crime involving an attack on his partner (Michael Caine). The main difference is the cop is 800 years old and the bad guys are witches.
Why view it through the smudged and gritty lens of “CSI,” “NYPD Blue” and the like when it works reasonably well as comic book eye candy? Because, by fantasy standards, it’s also dully derivative, evoking everything from “Seventh Son” to the “Harry Potter” movies. As a supernatural police procedural, it at least gets the goofball kick it sorely needs.
Diesel plays Kaulder, a witch hunter born in Medieval Europe who is cursed with immortality by the witch queen he slays in the movie’s prologue (Julie Engelbrecht). Fast-forward to modern-day Manhattan, where he’s for all intents and purposes a police detective, tracking down witches who have violated the truce worked out with mortals — by manipulating the weather or some other magical infraction — and bringing them before a tribunal, at which point they do not get burned at the stake but locked up in an enchanted subterranean hoosegow. Much of Kaulder’s job seems to involve occult forensics: collecting, examining and interpreting dead flies, soil samples, bloody fingerprints and mystic runes written in window condensation.
All that Sherlockian shlepping changes when Kaulder’s friend and Dr. Watson-like chronicler (Caine), a Roman Catholic priest from a secret order known as the Dolans, is attacked and tortured. As the old man lies near death, Kaulder must team with a new young priest (Elijah Wood) and a “good” witch (Rose Leslie), to determine who is behind the crime and what he or she wants. I’m not saying this premise isn’t ridiculous — it is — but from the skewed vantage point of a crime thriller, it’s kind of fun.
As Kaulder, Diesel does what he does, rumbling out lines of silly dialogue in his subwoofer of a voice. As far as acting goes, there’s not much. Kaulder is said to have been cursed, yet he seems pretty darn content with his life, sleeping with stewardesses, tinkering with antique watches — a metaphor for endless time? — and sipping fine liquor in his posh condo in between collaring magical malefactors. It’s not a bad life, and Kaulder seems far from the stereotype of the jaded alcoholic flat-foot, tortured by personal loss (as we’re meant to imagine he is, via the frequent flashbacks we’re shown of his dead wife and daughter, killed by a plague conjured by the witch queen).
As for action, the special-effects-laden fight scenes are ho-hum, incoherent and badly lit. It’s often hard to tell what some warlock or scorpion-like beast is doing and to whom.
The supernatural mystery genre is hot right now. “The Last Witch Hunter” joins “Grimm,” “Sleepy Hollow” and their small-screen ilk. Diesel doesn’t cut it as a defender of the human race against the forces of hell. But he’s not half bad as the next Sgt. Joe “Freaky” Friday.
“The Last Witch Hunter” ??
Rating: PG-13, for some scary images, violence
Showing: Alderwood, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Everett Stadium, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood Cinemas, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas Seattle, Woodinville, Cascade Mall, Oak Harbor Plaza
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