The Last Witch Hunter

The Last Witch Hunter

Cast:

• Vin Diesel as Kaulder
• Rose Leslie as Chloe
• Elijah Wood as Dolan 37th
• Ólafur Darri Olafsson as Belial
• Rena Owen as Glaeser
• Julie Engelbrecht as the Witch Queen
• Michael Caine as Dolan 36th

Review:

Introducing new and exciting fantasy requires juggling two competing imperatives, both necessary and useful to others. On the one hand they have to perform the most basic functions of all successful fiction - creating compelling characters audiences will identify with. Characters such as the mysterious Kaulder (Vin Diesel), a 800-year-old man related to the existential burden of immortality by focusing on the job - in the case of hunting down and killing witches.

There is a lot of ground to be covered by mining the inner life of a person who looked at the innate human experience from the perspective of foreign (and The Last witch Hunter is the best when he did it), but this movie has hands too full for it. Because it is also a story of urban fantasy with magic and monsters and mythology, he had to spend considerable time building the world Kaulder and his friends live in and that they comply with the rules.

Theoretically, there is no reason why this imperative must compete at all, but the fact is a film has a limited time frame in which to convey all the information necessary to understand it. This encourages efficiency storytelling, character element attaching importance to import the concept of development of the world so that both can be introduced together, which is a good idea when it works and bad when it does not.

And it does not work here as it is clear from the first voice over from the old Kaulder helper Dolan (Caine) explains the rules of the secret world of magic they both police that the film does not have time to show because of an act that is open extended. Lack of cohesion in action, characters and stories are the most consistent feature wizard dialog Hunter so most characters' fully exposition describes some new ideas in the rules of the world without any emotional connection to it.

They were not helped by the fact that many witches Hunter is a fantastic cop procedural, requiring a steady diet alone exposition information to keep moving forward, as Kaulder pulling out all the stops to find a person who appears to have killed his old friend.

Diesel himself immune to many of the problems that he can sprinkle a statement about how magic works with a strange deep reflections on the very human nature of evil. It's about as close to the characterization as a witch Hunter gets, though it was hindered by the inability to engage with the past is extended due Kaulder directly linked to the mystery of his attack.

Seek guidance from the first meeting with the witch Queen bed (Engelbrecht), Kaulder track a Dreamwalker (Leslie), a magician who specializes in entering the minds of others and looking inside. In the hands of what should be a movie writer at most a one-sentence explanation of the essence of the character, his dark secret that when exposed to mean anything to the audience because ordinary people do not have personal experience with being Dreamwalkers.

The rest of the players in very much the same boat trying to make a material that affects the sound, but the characters are what they do and nothing else that makes them the channel for the plot and nothing else.

If the ideas behind the world interesting enough, either unique or very primal, they can make up for their shortcomings or at least hide them during the initial appearance. But they did not. It is a secret world of magic and magic users lie just beneath the everyday Manhattan with the board makes the rules and sort of helping hand of the Catholic Church: no one involved seems to be interested in stretching the parameters set urban fantasy.

It is also the world feels empty; few people in a given scene but Diesel and one or two other actors. This increases the unreality of the world witch Hunter while reducing the scale - it's hard to be epic when there were only three or four people around at any given time.

Nor is the set pieces themselves, what few there are, are very impressive. Sometimes merge into the world and building a decent blend of action, especially in the first meeting with a witch Belial (Olafsson) at Dream Bar, but such moments that other action over before it begins.

The only exception is the final extended as Kaulder excavate ancient Witch prison to confront his ancient enemy once and for all. Set in the caverns under the church's headquarters in which prisoners are kept Kaulder it was dark and dank finale in which little can be seen and what can not seem feasible, filled with some of the weakest films visual effects and wire work.

The Last Witch Hunter is not terrible by imagination and there are times when addressing the worst instincts to give a glimpse of the film filmmaker who might try to make. Diesel can hold the screen and he is totally comfortable with the outlook Kaulder information about urbanity and competence and humanism strange. 

But there is a balance that must be found to make one of these things work, or lacking that at least one of the elements of fantasy or character should shine. When the two sides failed (the case as more and more fantasy brought to the screen), the basic framework of the story is clearly at odds with itself, and not all charismatic actors in the world will keep the result of feeling like it lasts forever.

Share this