Did Vin Diesel watch the 2013 film Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and say to his associates in that trademark rumbly voice: “Yeah. I want to make an action-thriller on a witch-hunting theme as well, though obviously I can’t aspire to being as good as that film with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton as Hansel and Gretel.” Or did Diesel point to a shelf of books about the history of witchcraft and rumble to his colleagues: “Yeah. Witch-hating is a misogynist paranoid phenomenon. So let’s deconstruct that satirically with a film starring me as a macho witch hunter battling an evil female.”
In this dismal and dull film, Diesel plays Kaulder, a guy who has been alive for 800 years, on an eternal mission to fight the witches who live secretly among us. They are the bad witches, you understand, who have infringed a peace-accord understanding with good witches policed by an ancient brotherhood of priests, among whom is Dolan, played by Michael Caine, and a younger priest, also called Dolan (Elijah Wood) whose dog collar gets later secularised into a white polo-neck. Kaulder is not unaware of the controversies associated with witch-hunting. He says solemnly: “Salem was wrong.” Wow. Thanks for that, Kaulder. Yet he is a man of action, not ideas, and gets it on with a pert female flight attendant in his hotel room, the kind of move you may associate more with Austin Powers.
