Instead Kaulder is dressed in an array of high collared shirts and edgily cut overcoats – though these are as likely designed to make the most of Diesel’s pumped-up physique as for any aesthetic reasons.Īnd that, more-or-less, is it. Gone are the leathers, cloaks and boots usually associated with this type of character. But when you have a medieval witch finder who cannot die, condemned to wander eternity, ridding earth of any witch – of which there are apparently quite a few living alongside us – who steps out of place, who needs depth? Here we have a modern day New York – where Kaulder has set up home to fight the forces of evil – beautifully pristine in a clinical, big budget fashion, and where he lives in a multi-room duplex in the famous San Remo building overlooking Central park: how come all ancient heroes seem to live in unbridled luxury when they make it as far as the twenty first century? Kaulder himself also gives the classic witch hunter appearance a refreshingly contemporary edge. The plot may be paper-thin – this is a Vin Diesel film after all. The truth though, is that the result is actually quite fun.

With blatantly obvious reliance on CGI, characters who wouldn’t look out of place in one of those supernatural high-school dramas popular amongst prepubescent teenagers, and a plot which jumps back and forth through time in an effort to beef out a back story aimed at giving life and substance to the story’s central hero, this is clearly not a film which aims to be taken seriously. So many of its constituents – if taken on their individual merits – would normally be the type to make true film lovers run in the opposite direction. The Last Witch Hunter – directed by Breck Eisner, written by Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless and featuring Vin Diesel, Michael Caine, Elijah Wood and Rose Leslie is a film which really shouldn’t be as good as it is.

Now, in modern day New York, it appears the time has come for Kaulder and his associates to face ‘The Witch Queen’ – the head of the witches – in a battle which will determine once and for all, not just their fate, but also that of the entire human race.

Cursed in medieval times to live for eternity it has been his job through the ages – with the assistance of a secretive church organisation known as the ‘Axe and Cross’ – to hold the powers of witches at bay, and protect the human race from their evil powers. Kaulder (Vin Diesel) is an ancient being known as the ‘Witch Hunter’.

The last witch hunter cast members