Somehow I knew that this movie was going to stink - call it “Bad Movie ESP.” Maybe it was the inclusion of the increasingly one dimensional Milla Jovovich or maybe it was the fact that the trailers featured a cast of a thousand faceless goons getting beaten by Jovovich’s heroine, Violet, against different backdrops and with Violet sporting different clothes and hair colors. Either way, I wasn’t terribly excited to see this film and for the second time in a month I wanted to walk out of the theater.

But I wouldn’t do that to you, dear readers. Nay, I will continue to prove my mettle and show that I can sit through the entirety of any film, regardless of how bad it is.

How bad is “Ultraviolet?” It is so bad that one would swear carrot Top had to be in it somewhere. It was terrible and right from the start too. Violet is a hemophage. What’s that? I’m not really sure. The movie tried to explain it, but it sounded like a medical lecture and I didn’t catch it all. I think a hemophage is a human that was infected by this blood disease that kind of turned them in to vampires. Oh, but not cool vampires, meaning no blood sucking, no being limited to coming out only at night, no fear of garlic, stakes, etc. No, they just have two little fangs that sometimes come out when they talk. In fact, I didn’t even see Violet’s fangs until late in the film and then I started to put two and two together.

Anyway, back to the incredibly muddled plot - Violet works for a revolutionary group that is trying to bring down the government which gave people the disease in the first place and has since been exterminating them. She breaks into a facility and steals what she thinks is a weapon but is really a little boy. Actually, the boy is a clone of the bad guy, Daxus, played by Nick Chinlund, and he is the key to saving all the hemophages or something. I did find it amusing that the boy was played by Cameron Bright, the kid who played Oleg in “Running Scared,” which I saw the week before. I guess it doesn’t take much to amuse me. Unfortunately, that’s about all I found amusing.

Look, I like martial arts, gun play and sword fights as much as anybody else but that was all the movie was. The violence didn’t seem original and it never really moved the story anywhere. It was also a very big problem that Violet constantly fought these faceless goons. It felt like watching your friend play a very long, boring video game and knowing that he will never let you play.

Speaking of video games, let’s talk about the horrendous graphics and tacky look of the picture. While there were a few scenes that were lit and styled just right, others looked terribly grainy or incredibly stupid. there is one scene where Violet rides a motorcycle up buildings and through windows and it looks so fake. I know that it is fake, but still, it shouldn’t look so fake that you’re thinking about how you could create that effect with a video camera, a projector and a sheet.

After the movie, I found what was my biggest disappointment about this film. It was written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, who wrote and directed the infinitely better “Equilibrium.” I thought the martial arts and gun play looked familiar and its because it was “gun-kata,” the style that was invented for “Equilibrium.”

Please rent that movie instead. It has characters you care about, a simple plot, good acting and straight forward directing without the terrible special effects that plagued “Ultraviolet.”

*

login to post comments