woensdag 9 maart 2016

The last Witch Hunter (2015)

Summary :
The modern world holds many secrets, but the most astounding secret of all is that witches still live amongst us; vicious supernatural creatures intent on unleashing the Black Death upon the world. Armies of witch hunters battled the unnatural enemy across the globe for centuries, including Kaulder, a valiant warrior who managed to slay the all-powerful Queen Witch, decimating her followers in the process. In the moments right before her death, the Queen curses Kaulder with her own immortality, forever separating him from his beloved wife and daughter in the afterlife.

Genre : Fantasy/Adventure
Country : USA/China/Canada

Cast :
Vin Diesel : Kaulder
Rose Leslie : Chloe
Elijah Wood : Dolan 37th

Director : Breck Eisner

My Opinion

“Today we both die.

I curse you with life.
To never know peace.
To walk the Earth alone for eternity.
You will never die.”

Isn't it fun when some old-fashioned witch hunting is being used in a typical action-fantasy film. The last time I saw a duo at work who wanted to nip this venom in the bud, was in "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters". The latter was a mediocre film, with the proportionally balanced curves of Gemma Arterton raising more enthusiasm than the film itself. In "The Last Witch Hunter" such a person isn't included, but in return Vin Diesel was willing to appear. And that's a guarantee for bloated body parts. In this case the muscles of this walking wardrobe.

The film needs to warm up just like a real diesel. Once this is done, it switches into a higher gear. Although I think it shifted into high gear, because it threatens to derail once and a while. The intro shows a group of medieval bearded men, armed with grotesque, primitive weapons. One of them is Kaulder (Vin Diesel) who lost his family because of the plague. These warriors plan to eliminate the Witch Queen who summoned this curse. Kaulder succeeds. But before the Witch Queen dies, she curses Kaulder to an eternal life. Flash forward to today's society. We see Kaulder furiously (yep) driving a flashy sports car and living in an expensive penthouse where he enjoys his passion for beautiful women. In between he still tries to get rid of witches.

What follows is a fairly fuzzy story about a conspiracy to bring the witch queen back to life. Kaulder tries to prevent this from happening with the cooperation of the not so evil witch Chloe (Rose Leslie). The witch hunter is also assisted by a person of a medieval organization called the Axe and Cross, an ancient brotherhood of priests. The assistant is a priest called Dolan (Michael Caine). When this counsel is apparently murdered, his successor jumps in to help (Elijah Wood). Yep, you can say it's a chaotic story.

My opinion about this average movie is short and concise. The best thing this film has to offer, are the sometimes dazzling special effects. And that's about it, because the rest is really too sad for words. Uninspired acting (except that of Rose Leslie who took care of some humor) with a dead boring, emotionless Vin Diesel and overly geeky Elijah Wood whose white turtleneck irritated me throughout the film. That night I had more nightmares about this horrible clothing than about those nasty looking witches. "The last Witch Hunter" isn't really exciting so to speak and sometimes it comes across as implausible. Diesel's jugglery with some ancient rune stones aboard an airliner, to control a storm, is such an example. Pretty laughable. All in all I rather see Vin appearing in a movie like "xXx", so he can flex his muscles again while producing that primitive growling of his. Apparently there's a sequel in the making. I'll probably let that one magically go past me.