Eye For Film >> Movies >> Ultraviolet (2006) Film Review
Ultraviolet
Reviewed by: Gator MacReady
What is the difference between a brilliant action movie and a mass-produced, mechanical action movie? One is made by people who care about what they do and the other is made on a conveyor belt in a factory. Ultaviolet falls into the latter category.
Action movies can put as many bells and whistles and spins on their old formulas as they want, but unless they come up with a genuinely new storyline they are pretty much just setting the dominoes up for two whole acts and watching them fall in the last.
Ultraviolet has nothing new to offer and goes through so many of the tired motions that it's exhausting just sitting on your ass watching it.
In the near future a totalitarian government has declared some sort of fascist new order...snooze...Milla Jovovich is a human/mutant/vampirey thing who, along with many others, was created by the government for some experiment and now just runs around killing people by driving up the sides of skyscrapers on her motorcycle, while a talentless idiot murders a death-metal guitar, instead of providing a decent score.
All of the action is done in that cliched, post-Matrix style of slow-mo, martial arts, sword fights, slow-mo, more martial arts, more slow-mo...snooze. It's doing my head in how many directors are cranking out crap like this. Kurt Wimmer, who made the seriously boring Equilibrium, is fast becoming a director of Uwe Boll proportions.
Apparently, crapmerchant studio Screen Gems, part of the "we will destroy the art of filmmaking forever" super-evil that is Sony, didn't like Wimmer's final cut and hacked off 30 minutes, leaving the film in it's current state. Is this true? Or is it just a direct quote from the Paul Anderson Book Of Excuses?
Either way, Ultraviolet is like all the *beep* parts of Blade, Underworld, the Matrix sequels, Spawn and Resident Evil congealed into one ugly ball of crap. I'm sick of these movies! When will they learn that watching someone dance between torrents of bullets, effortlessly massacring thousands of generic bad guys, isn't entertaining?
There's no human involvement here! If this is what it means to be a vampire, then I'll remain a reptile.
Reviewed on: 23 Jun 2006