And if it’s hard to buy the star as a 14th-century soldier of the Catholic Church, earnestly slaying sorceresses for 700 years without a wrinkle to show for it, the screenplay (bearing evident redrafting scars from a trio of scribes) doesn’t make much of an effort to sell the idea.
Barring an early (and swiftly discarded) reference to his character’s prowess as a ladies’ man, there’s precious little room here for Diesel’s lunkish, slightly self-parodic streak of humor. Yet if its aim is to reposition him as a solo action star, perhaps re-engaging the dwindling audience for the “Riddick” films, this new vehicle doesn’t really play to his strengths - despite being developed and co-produced by the actor himself. Despite a pre-Halloween release date, the pic is more gung-ho than gooseflesh-inclined in genre either way, it’s unlikely to mint the franchise threatened by its eminently welcome ending.Ĭommercially, given the extraordinary expanding cultural impact of the “Fast and Furious” series, “The Last Witch Hunter” might expect to ride on Diesel fumes to an extent. Too drab to succeed even as defiantly unvirtuous trash, this era-straddling tale of an immortal medieval warrior protecting modern-day New York from a Black Death reboot stifles Diesel‘s rough-hewn charisma via a sludgy, impermeable oil spill of CGI effects - in the service of largely unspectacular hocus pocus. One of the trickier tasks Vin Diesel’s eponymous hero faces in “ The Last Witch Hunter” is tracking a villain by his signature scent of “moldering crabapples” - a distinctive enough fragrance in its own right, but hard to separate from the generally funky aroma of decomposition that permeates Breck Eisner’s limp, lame-brained occult thriller.
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