700-odd years ago, Kaulder (Vin Diesel) leads a party in pursuit of the Witch Queen, bent on retribution for the deaths of his wife and daughter. He is the only survivor. We next find him in present-day Manhattan, cursed with immortality by the Witch Queen, as witch-hunting enforcer for an organisation called Axe And Cross where he is aided and abetted by a chap called the Dolan. The current and 36th Dolan (Michael Caine) is on the point of retiring when he suddenly dies. With the assistance of the 37th Dolan (Elijah Wood) Kaulder starts to chase down some aspects of the death which don't make sense.
It was a good idea to take a supernatural movie and put a CSI emphasis on it. It isn't entirely successful here but, mostly, this is a decent romp. Vin Diesel manages to bring together his hardman and his soft side, and makes a protagonist who is fun to identify. Michael Caine plays Alfred again in a "where's my pay cheque?" part, which gets the performance it deserves. Rose Leslie - very pretty, and I'd never heard of her having never watched Downton Abbey or Game Of Thrones - does what she can with a part which is chunky in terms of screen time and skeletal in terms of character development.
This isn't a terribly good film, but I quite enjoyed it simply because it's the sort of not terribly good film which I quite enjoy. I suspect it won't be the franchise-starter it looks as if it hoped it would be,
It was a good idea to take a supernatural movie and put a CSI emphasis on it. It isn't entirely successful here but, mostly, this is a decent romp. Vin Diesel manages to bring together his hardman and his soft side, and makes a protagonist who is fun to identify. Michael Caine plays Alfred again in a "where's my pay cheque?" part, which gets the performance it deserves. Rose Leslie - very pretty, and I'd never heard of her having never watched Downton Abbey or Game Of Thrones - does what she can with a part which is chunky in terms of screen time and skeletal in terms of character development.
This isn't a terribly good film, but I quite enjoyed it simply because it's the sort of not terribly good film which I quite enjoy. I suspect it won't be the franchise-starter it looks as if it hoped it would be,