Look out, too, for Joseph Gilgun in a small yet engagingly bonkers role. But this is Diesel’s vehicle, and there’s a sparky, pleasant chemistry between he and Leslie. It’s Rose Leslie who steals the film as Chloe, the dream-invading Brit witch who could probably have shouldered the story all by herself. The movie doesn’t give much of a role to Caine – he’s in the role of wise old mentor, yet again – nor does Elijah Wood have a great deal to do other than stammer and stare saucer-eyed off-camera as he did in The Lord Of The Rings. The Last Witch Hunter is at its most fun when it simply follows Kaulder around on his breadcrumb trail of clues, Breck Eisner cheerfully throwing in the odd modern fairytale flourish like a kid being lured in by a magical tree which grows gummy bears, or the flash of a hulking monster made from human skulls and the jagged remains of old trees. To return to the Batman analogy established earlier, Diesel plays the Detective Comics version of the hero here – a character who can get on the trail of a bad guy just from the vague whiff of garlic and rotten crab apples.
One early scene set on a transatlantic flight sees him hunt down a young, irresponsible magic dabbler with little more than a glass of water and a paperclip. His past has seen him rub shoulders with Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin, we’re told, but these day’s he spends more of his time sniffing out more mundane forms of black magic. Diesel, as ruggedly benign as always, presents himself as a kind of sword-wielding detective, examining crime scenes and apparently ordinary situations for the hidden presence of evil. What begins as an earthy riff on Robert E Howard – all beards, robes and flashing swords in a witch’s underground lair – soon gives way to a contemporary fantasy akin to Guillermo del Toro’s first Hellboy. But when Father Dolan is suddenly gripped by a curse placed on his head, Kaulder has to join forces with Chloe and his new handler, the 37th Dolan (Elijah Wood) to discover who cast the evil spell.
It’s Kaulder’s job to keep a lid on the city’s underground magical element, punishing witches (male and female) who break the laws of an ancient council, the Axe and Cross. A plush private wine bar run by young witch Chloe (Game Of Thrones’ Rose Leslie) lets its customers get high on phantasmagorical cocktails. A cake store is a front for some kind of inexplicable magic circle involving maggots and butterflies. Eisner (and credited screenwriters Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless) imagine New York as a magical-realist labyrinth where white and black magic are still practiced behind the slick facade of corporate buildings and coffee chains.