Ultraviolet

Official Ultraviolet Site
Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Starring:Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright
Rated PG-13 (for language, violence and partial nudity images)
Running Time: 88 Minutes
Released:February 24, 2006


1 Out Of 5 Bites

When a Hollywood film isn't screened for big-boy critics, said film must be aware of an irretractably detrimental fact: the whole thing is woefully awful, but you're committed, you've done it and you might as well get it over with....just roll with it.

It opens with comic book depictions of Ultraviolet (a la The Incredible Hulk) , intending to assert the movie sprung from a comic book series. If someone can find such a series, I will be able to sleep better at night. Under such pretenses, the movie can't really prop itself up on anything else remotely original. The premise of the movie seems to be scalped from 1999's Gloria with Sharon Stone (Sidney Lumet's remake of the original).

Action sequences wax of a poor man's Matrix, sprinkled with an unsavory dose of just plain bad CGI effects. Or was it? Director Kurt Wimmer employs artistic effects that hearken back to "Heavy Metal" meets "Tron" meets "The Matrix" meets every other pastelly, slow-mo, stop-action sequence that's been done. I kept holding out judgment in some of the really cartoonish car chase scenes early on, consigning the obscene fakeness to some artistic, Japanimation-ish endeavor. Now I'm not so sure. There was a disctinctly modified coloration effect added to the characters and the scenery that ultimately did not cater to the ethos and atmosphere of the film as was perhaps originally intended.

Violet, (Milla Jovovich), is the default, red-hot, kick-your-rump to oblivion sci-fi chick of the era (thanks to The Fifth Element and the Resident Evil series). She's ULTRAViolet because she can slither into skimpy, tummy-revealing costumes will try to make you love it while she's slicing you in half. Her voice over intro in the opening scenes tellingly warns, "you may not understand the world I was born into." You may still not, even upon rising to your feet and exiting the theater.

This world revolves around a war over blood, a certain kind of blood that has been transforming more and more people into an underground race called hemophages (literally, blood eaters). So what you really have is a bunch of superhuman vampires performing insane feats. Add to that a vigorous government program to eradicate the hemophages because of the challenge they impose upon their own agenda, which includes a super-duper weapon encased in a container that actually houses a nine-year-old boy named Six (Cameron Bright, who's showing up quite a bit this movie season).

Through some requisite hijinks, rock-'em, sock-'em broils and battles, Violet endears herself to the boy, protective of him in multiple threatening situations. It turns out the Six is a duplicate- a clone- with a short span to live.

The battle with the boss is rather anti-climactic at the end and could have been more. Too bad this thin excuse for a film doesn't register visually on the actual ultraviolet wavelength so that none of us would have to see it.