The Last Witch Hunter review: Harry Potter for emo kids

If you care to read up on such things, you will discover that The Last Witch Hunter was borne from "conversations with Vin Diesel".

Diesel is, among many other things, a fan of (the not entirely dissimilar) Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game, as well as this movie's producer and star. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a reality where The Last Witch Hunter could exist without Vin Diesel.

Here, in common with most of the gravel-voiced star’s headlining roles, the Diesel character is given a sorrowful back story: Evil Witch Queen curses maggoty medieval Vin with immortality, which gives him all the more time to brood upon the deaths of his beloved wife and daughter.

If there’s one thing that Vin Diesel can be relied upon to do better than any other artist working today, it’s brood. And brood he does. All the way to contemporary New York, where, with the assistance of a secret society and Michael Caine, he hunts down those witches who breach a centuries-old truce forbidding their kind to mess with humans.

Unhappily, on the eve of Michael Caine’s retirement, his Alfred-alike cohort is killed, leaving poor Vin Diesel to brood some more.

With the assistance of the old gent's replacement (Elijah Wood) and a charming young witch (Game of Thrones' Rose Leslie), Vin's Kaulder (that's got a franchise ring, don't you think?) soon learns of a fiendish plan to resurrect the Witch Queen that we thought had been offed by the hero during the film's overture. Icelandic actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Contraband, The Deep) pops up to make with the necessary black magic.

Breck Eisner, who previously directed family flop Sahara and the 2010 remake of The Crazies, is a director who nobody is too sure what to do with. Yet here he does solid work until, as per usual, the final 10 minutes of CG overkill. No matter: an excellent ensemble elevates the material from generic to classy.

Picture Harry Potter for Emo kids. No wonder there’s already a sequel in the works. Brood on, Vin.