Ultraviolet

Well, another weekend, another movie being unleashed to theaters without being screened for critics. According to the website, boxofficemojo.com, there's only been 2 weekends this year that did not feature at least one major release that didn't get screened for critics. This week's lucky winner is Ultraviolet - a movie that wants to be a fast-paced comic book-style thrill ride, but it simply lacks the brains, coherency, and character to pull it off. The plot is a jumbled mess that jumps around so much that I'm not entirely clear as to what it was supposed to be about. With a running time of just 85 minutes, the movie whizzes by in a blink of an eye, and pretty much leaves your mind the second you walk out the theater.

The film actually opens promisingly with a very cool opening credit sequence that displays a series of comic book covers featuring the film's heroine. The artstyle on each book changes, covering just about every popular form of comic book art (Traditional, 1960s sci-fi, Japanese manga, etc.) This at least lets the audience know what mind frame they should be in while watching this movie right off the bat. Writer-director Kurt Wimmer doesn't follow through, though. The film is set in a futuristic society not unlike the one we saw just two months ago in Aeon Flux. (Then again, judging by how that film did at the box office, you probably didn't see that world.) Regardless, even if you didn't see Aeon, this world will be nothing new to you. It's a hodgepodge of every sci-fi cliche in the book spruced up with so much CG that it resembles less a movie and more like the opening cinema sequence of a Playstation video game. After a very short opening voice over from the film's title heroine which is supposed to clue us in on the film's back story, but doesn't seem to give us enough information to go on, the movie throws us head first into the plot without looking back.

Violet (Milla Jovovich) is a member of a vampire-like class of people known as Hemophages. These people were created when some kind of government-controlled virus went out of control and infected half the world's population. Since then, the humans and the Hemophages have been locked in an endless war, each side trying to wipe the other side out, while the Hemophages are also secretly hoping for a cure that can return them to their once-human state. Violet is a highly trained killing machine who can change her hair and clothes at will, and can seemingly make weapons pop seemingly out of thin air. (How, the movie never quite explains.) As the film opens, she's been charged with the task of stealing a new weapon that the humans have created. The weapon is kept in a bizarre briefcase that looks kind of like a cross between a toilet seat and a hospital bedpan. Turns out the "weapon" is not a device at all, but rather a young clone child known only as Six (Cameron Bright from last week's Running Scared), who holds the secret to tipping the scales of the war within him.

Violet's maternal instincts kick in when she lays eyes on Six. Her Hemophage brothers want him dead, and so do the bad guys, led by the blood-thirsty Daxus (Nick Chinlund) who always wears these little silver devices up his nose for some reason. Violet and Six are on the run, the world's against them, and time may be running out for Violet to find out the true reason for Six's existence. I'm sorry if that synopsis sounds muddled, but that's all I've got. The film never quite slows down long enough to fully explain itself. One minute the kid seemingly holds the weapon to destroy all Hemphages, then it's believed he holds the cure, then it's revealed he actually holds something that can kill humans...The story twists and turns so much that your brain can get whiplash trying to sort it all out. It doesn't matter, though. Ultraviolet exists only to showcase its fight scenes, action sequences, and Jovovich's body, seeing as though she's the only person in this society who is allowed to wear semi-revealing clothes.

Not since 2004's Van Helsing have I seen a movie that jumps from one action sequence to the next with such reckless care. Actually, we get a bunch of fight scenes crammed into one, since each sequence seems to only last a minute or two. Violet is approached by some faceless henchmen dressed in outfits that look like hand-me-downs that were purchased at Darth Vader's garage sale, she kicks their asses in about 30 seconds or less, moves on a little bit, is approached by more faceless men...You get the idea. The movie plays out like a video game having Violet being confronted every 2 inches by drones, only to have her effortlessly defeat them. Where's the fun in that? There's no suspense or danger. We never feel like the heroine is in any real danger, because she can seemingly cut down just about anyone in the time it takes for you to pick up the remote and turn on the television. There are some fights that hint at being cool, but they always seem to be over before they can even begin. The film tries to create some tension by hinting that Violet's disease is slowly killing her, but she never seems to slow down except when it is convenient for the script.

Adding to the whole video game vibe of the film is how artificial and fake everything in this movie looks. Some of the action sequences are so heavy on the green screen tricks and CG that they don't even look plausible and we don't buy them for a second. Take a sequence that pops up early in the film when Violet's on a motorcycle, and is being chased down by a helicopter. As Violet flies on top of cars, runs her bike up and along the side of buildings, smashes through walls, and generally breaks every single law of gravity and physics (all without the bike suffering a single scratch, naturally), I spent more time focusing on how the scene was done than on the scene itself. That's because the effects work is so blatantly obvious, and the movie does nothing to hide it. The sequence looks like it was halfway finished, like the CG needed a few more touch ups so it didn't look so much like a video game. I do have to give it credit, however, for being the only sequence in the film that actually sticks out in my mind and for running longer than a minute. Ultraviolet's schlock value is increased even more by just how deadly serious the movie takes itself. Yes, just like Aeon Flux, the film presents us with a future society where no one shows any emotion except pissed-off rage when the title heroine is killing bad guys with martial arts, guns, swords, and whatever other kinds of weapons Violet can materialize. It's not quite as unintentionally comical as Aeon, and the movie does have a clever line or two that made me smile that at least let me know the cast knew what kind of film they were making here. But, the film still takes itself way too seriously.

Since the film is focusing so much on the action and the effects, the cast and their characters get lost in the shuffle. Jovovich is hot and knows how to kick butt, but that's really all there is to her character. We don't even really understand the extent of her relationship with her main partner, a fellow Hemophage named Garth, except that he stores her arsenal. Young actor Cameron Bright gives pretty much the same performance he gives in every single movie - silent, steely, and tortured. This kid makes Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense look like the life of the party! I really wish I could see the kid in an actual role of a child, instead of an evil clone, or a reincarnated adult. Yeah, he played a kid in Running Scared, but he didn't get a chance to act like one. The kid's obviously talented, but he's in danger of becoming a one trick pony. Maybe he should look for a role where he actually smiles once.

I would like to make it clear that Ultraviolet's not a horrible movie, just simply an underwhelming and immediately forgettable one. It's the kind of movie you remember watching, but you can't really remember anything about it except for a couple random scenes. The film's ending seems to be hinting at a franchise, but judging by the audience's reaction, I think this may be the last we see of Violet. The movie's got the right idea and the right frame of mind, it just can't do what it wants to in a memorable way. The film's short running time seems to hint that it was longer at one time. Maybe an unrated DVD can fill in some of the many gaps this film holds. (It does seem to be overly-sanitized and edited in order to achieve a "golden" PG-13 rating.) Ultraviolet probably won't have a long life at the theater, and it'll be lucky if anyone remembers it two months from now. The best I can say about this film is it could have been a lot worse.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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