FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST WITCH HUNTER" (2015)

“The Last Witch Hunter” (* OUT OF ****) casts spells that are far from inspired and mediocre at best.  “Dungeons & Dragons” aficionado Vin Diesel toplines this ponderous, PG-13 rated pabulum as an 800-year old protagonist who struggles with the help of the Catholic Church to preserve a precarious peace between witches and mankind.  Not only does Diesel appear incredibly miscast as an immortal “Highlander” type medieval warrior careening around contemporary New York City in a sports car, but also this witchy washy yarn doesn’t surpass superior witchcraft fantasies such as “Snow White and The Huntsman” (2012) and “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” (2013).  The chief problem with this lavishly-produced, CGI-laden extravaganza is that it takes itself far too seriously.  Apart from its dire shortage of humor, this dreary potboiler suffers from a dearth of quotable dialogue, banal adversaries, and second-rate supporting characters.  Gifted thespians like Oscar-winner Michael Caine and Elijah Wood shrivel in lackluster roles as our hero’s sidekicks who are designated as ‘Dolans.’  “Sahara” director Breck Eisner and three scenarists, Cory Goodman of “Priest” along with Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless of “Dracula Untold,” have conjured up a synthetic storyline that generates neither charisma nor spectacle.  Actually, they appear to have imitated the sensational Wesley Snipes’ vampire saga “Blade” right down to its rebirth of an ancient blood demon.  Similarly, “The Last Witch Hunter” should have bristled with non-stop momentum, violently outlandish combat sequences, and a coherently contrived mythology.  Instead, it degenerates into a dreary mumbo-jumbo melodrama.  The most ambitious CGI scene pits our hero against a clumsy beast known as ‘the Sentinel,’ and he destroys behemoth with a sword as if he were a bullfighter straddling it.  This unruly creature resembles a huge tiger that appears as it if were assembled from wicker and features a jet engine afterburner for its gullet.  Our hero’s chief adversary is a hideous Witch Queen swarming with creepy crawlies who looks like she has spent too many centuries in a mud bath.  Moreover, she boasts none of the imaginative flamboyance of Charlize Theron’s enchantress in “Snow White and the Huntsman.” 

“The Last Witch Hunter” unfolds during the chilly Middle Ages.  A group of stalwart souls armed with swords trudge through snow-swept, mountainous terrain to storm an eerie cluster of haunted trees.  A despicable looking dame known as the Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht of the TV mini-series “The Strain”) inhabits this stronghold raging with fire and brimstone.  Predictably, she isn’t glad to see these bearded gate-crashers with their religious iconography.  This homicidal hag with her hatred for mankind has already decimated humanity with a black plague and incurred our hero’s wrath.  The Witch Queen’s pestilence exterminated our hero’s wife and daughter, and his happier times with them are recounted in several flashbacks.  When Kaulder (Vin Diesel with dwarfish dreadlocks) and the Witch Queen tangle, our fearless witch hunter skewers her with his flaming sword and finishes her off.  Ironically, Kaulder survives this trial by combat, but his survival becomes a tribulation.  “I curse you,” howls the wounded witch.  “You’ll never know peace. You will never die.”

 

Afterward, “The Last Witch Hunter” shifts its setting from the 13^th century to the 21st century.  Our brawny, shaven-headed hero with neither dwarfish facial fuzz nor noggin fur prowls a passenger jet as it encounters foul weather.  Actually, an ignorant young witch has smuggled a dangerous collection of runes aboard the aircraft, and she is to blame for the increment weather.  Naturally, our erudite hero invokes his age-old wisdom and defuses these volatile artifacts.  Nothing about this scene creates either suspense or excitement.  As his own personal reward, Kaulder seduces a nubile stewardess before he sits down for the last time with his 36^th Dolan (Michael Caine of “The Dark Knight”), a revered Catholic cleric who has spent the last 50 years chronicling our protagonist’s escapades for posterity.  Incidentally, Dolans are members of a covert Axe and Cross society within the Catholic Church.  Like Kaulder, they have devoted themselves to maintaining an uneasy truce between humans and witches.  In “The Last Witch Hunter,” witches walk the earth with mankind, just as vampires did in “Blade,” but few people know about their phantasmagorical presence.  Kaulder and the clerics act as intermediaries who work alongside the crafty Witch Counsel to keep these necromancers in line.  Kaulder captures witches who illegally practice black magic, and the Witch Counsel entomb them in a maze of caves.

 

The 36^th Dolan is poised to retire, and the 37^th Dolan (Elijah Wood of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy) prepares to replace him.  Although he saved the 37^th Dolan from a coven of witches, Kaulder doesn’t immediately recognize this newcomer.  Meantime, dramatic complications occur when the 36^th Dolan appears to have been murdered under mysterious circumstances by a shape-shifting sorcerer.  Kaulder discovers black magic at the scene of the crime and suspects that his ancient adversary, the Witch Queen, may have been playing possum all those years.  Along the way, Kaulder recruits a ‘good’ witch Chloe (Rose Leslie from “Game of Thrones”) to help him sort out the mystery.  Chloe’s claim to fame is her ability to cavort in dreams.  Happily, she rescues Kaulder from one disastrous dream after another when the Witch Queen’s evil cronies attack him on several occasions.  Our hero believes the solution to his quandary lies within his “Matrix” like dreams.

Ultimately, “The Last Witch Hunter” is largely incomprehensible gobbledygook.  Eisner and his scribes have enormous problems mapping out their complex witchcraft mythology.  They sprinkle bread crumbs of information about these conjurers throughout the muddled melodramatics, but seldom does anything about them come across as palatable.  Two surprises occur during these sluggish shenanigans, but neither are genuine revelations if you have paid attention to the formulaic plot.  The villains don’t stand out from the background, and the Witch Queen is stuck in the mud from the start.  Eisner orchestrates several big-budget action scenes, but these emerge as sloppy exercises.  Altogether, “The Last Witch Hunter” qualifies as hex-rated rubbish.

FILM REVIEW OF ''EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS" (2014)

Nobody has made a landmark Biblical movie since Mel Gibson helmed “The Passion of the Christ” in 2004.  Mind you, contenders have cropped up, primarily “Noah” (2014) with Russell Crowe, but it amounted to little more than a pretender with its apocryphal allusions to the Books of Enoch with its stone angels.  “Son of God” doesn’t really qualify since its producers re-edited it from The History Channel miniseries “The Bible.”  Sadly, nothing about director Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (** OUT OF ****) appears divinely inspired.  Scott, best known for lavish spectacles such as “Alien,” “Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down,” and “Prometheus,” has spent $140 million on this sprawling recreation of ancient Egypt.  Admittedly, Scott doesn’t qualify as a saint.  In a recent New York Times interview, Scott said about “Exodus,” “I’ve got it fairly well plotted out. I’m an atheist, which is actually good, because I’ve got to convince myself the story works.” Not surprisingly, the secular screenplay credited to four scribes, among them “Tower Heist” duo Adam Cooper & Bill Collage, “The Constant Gardner’s” Jeffrey Caine, and “Schindler's List’s” Steven Zaillian, adopts a realistic rather than a scriptural slant to its subject matter.  Moses behaves more like Rambo rather than Charlton Heston, and our hero discovers with considerable chagrin that he isn’t an Egyptian. Comparatively, “Exodus” neither takes its cues from Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 or 1956 versions of “The Ten Commandments” nor Mel Gibson’s subtitled “Passion of the Christ.” Certainly, nobody would expect anything less from a luminary like Sir Ridley Scott, whose last two films—“The Counselor” and “Prometheus”--excited as much as mystified audiences. Traditional believers may judge “Exodus” a questionable expense. For example, when Moses initially encounters God on the side of a mountain after a mudslide, the former finds himself dealing with an eleven-year old boy who reads him the riot act.  Later, during a subsequent confrontation with this obnoxious urchin, Scott presents the interview from two perspectives. Again, Moses is conversing to a child.  Meanwhile, Joshua eavesdrops on Moses, but all Joshua sees is Moses addressing a rock with nobody present in either human or divine form. Sure, this resembles the movie “Fight Club” (1999) where narrator Edward Norton argues with Brad Pitt, who turns out all-along to have been nothing but Norton’s hallucination of himself. If this kind of nonsense doesn’t bother you, you may enjoy “Exodus,” but I think that depicting God as a petulant punk undermines the gravity of the film. 

Basically, “Exodus” duplicates virtually everything that DeMille showed in his two “Ten Commandments” outings.  The venerable saga concerns oppression and intolerance.  The Egyptians are proud and powerful, while the Jews are poor and powerless. Moses appears and pleads for the release of his people. Predictably, the Egyptians with their architectural enthusiasm for worshipping themselves with massive monuments balk at turning the Jews loose.  Ramses and Moses remain at odds until God intervenes with ten deadly plagues that make Ramses into a believer. The Egyptian ruler releases the Jews, and they head off for Canaan.  A vindictive Ramses has second thoughts and decides to pursue Moses and his minions. The big showdown occurs at the Red Sea where Moses waves his staff and the waters recede just long enough for his people to cross.  Along rampages Ramses with murder on his mind and his army, but he doesn’t arrive in time to take his toll.  Instead, the toll takes him.  This is the stuff of which Sunday school lessons are taught and most movies about the event have depicted. Scott takes exception to several things.  He doesn’t include the adolescent years when Moses and the future ruler Ramses were playmates.  When “Exodus” unfolds, Moses and Ramses are adults and rivals to the throne.  Of course, Ramses’ noble father Seti (John Turturro of “The Big Lebowski”) thinks that Moses has a better head on his shoulders than his petulant son and confides as much in Moses.  Unfortunately, Seti points out that he cannot appoint Moses over his son.  This relationship resembles a similar relationship in Ridley Scott’s earlier epic “Gladiator” (2000) when the dying Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) preferred Maximus (Russell Crowe) to his repellent son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) for the throne.  During a savage war with the Hittites in 1300, Moses displays his martial ardor and saves the once and future pharaoh from certain death in battle. Moses serves chiefly as Seti and Ramses’ advisor.  In other words, he does all the dirty work with which neither wishes to soil their hands and clashes with a corrupt Viceroy Hegep (Ben Mendelsohn of “Killing Them Softly”) who reveals Moses’ genuine origins as a Jew. Moses goes into exile and bids farewell to Ramses. Ramses’ mother Tuya (Sigourney Weaver of “Alien”) isn’t as content as her son to let Moses off as easily and sends a pair of fiendish assassins to finish him off.

“Batman Begins” star Christian Bale and “Star Wars” actor Joel Edgerton generate neither chemistry nor camaraderie respectively as a militant Moses and a ramrod-straight Ramses.  Scott and his scenarists want us to believe that these two grew up together in the same house, but they share little in the way of brotherly affection.  Bale’s Moses relies more on the sword than the staff, and this differentiates this cinematic interpretation from Charlton Heston’s Moses.  Scott surrounds these two with a robust supporting cast, including Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, Ben Mendelsohn, and John Turturro. Sadly, they make only a minor impression.  Mendelsohn registers best as the slimy villain who gets his just comeuppance in the final reel.  The spectacular computer-generated imagery and the craggy scenery—lensed in Spain and the Canary Islands--qualify as top-drawer assets.  The film generates some unforgettable moments during the ten deadly plagues montage, particularly when the crocodiles crunch on fishermen. Clocking in at a leaden 150 minutes, the lackluster “Exodus: Gods and Kings” fares far better as a special effects extravaganza than a faith-based bonanza.