THE LAST WITCH HUNTER Review

The Last Witch Hunter is one of those movies that, were Vin Diesel not coming off a more prominent period in his career, would star Nicolas Cage in the titular role. What that says about the actual state of Diesel's career outside of the Fast & Furious franchise is up for debate, but what is undeniable is the guy at least has some modicum of charisma even if it only extends so far. With that charisma he has chosen to portray an eight hundred year old witch hunter that operates within a film that feels all too familiar and all too like it should be released in the doldrums of January when the weather outside matches the dark, wet and dreary aesthetic of the film. Instead, Summit has decided to release the film around Halloween is seeming hopes that the it may connect on a festive level, but folks who flock to Diesel's follow-up to the biggest entry in his Fast franchise won't find the actor giving us the knowingly cheesy tone of that over-the-top action spectacle or even any solid action as everything about The Last Witch Hunter is messy and incoherent. This isn't to say the film has no redeeming qualities as some of the character design (mainly that of the Witch Queen) is pretty interesting and the costume design is sleek even if the palette director Breck Eisner (The Crazies, Sahara) is painting on is a grainy one. This is more or less to say that Diesel shows little range in his performance, but his jackets are nice. It doesn't help that half an hour in one can fairly easily tell where things are going story-wise and while what is hinted at more or less turns out to be true it's as if screenwriters Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (yes, it took three writers to compose this slop) knew their script was too predictable and so they began throwing in random obstacles and twists that only end up making the film all the more confusing and all the more stupid. I hate to go into a movie doubting that it will provide anything of value, but if The Last Witch Hunter exceeded anything it was the expectation of just how generic and forgettable it would be.