Ultraviolet
Year: 2006
Director: Kurt Wimmer
Length: 94 minutes
Studio: Sony Pictures
Rating from : PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
UPC for dvd: 043396153752
ID in Amazon.com: B000FGGE68
Ultraviolet is a spectorqular 2006 surprise. From the time its trailers hit, I knew this one had big-time spectorqular potential. But trust me, bad movie fans, the previews didn’t do this one justice.
About the score: Really, this one is probably more like 3 1/2 cubes (as opposed to the 4 I gave it) — but it’s only major flaw is a plot that just drags on. If they could wrap it up 10 minutes faster, it might even be worthy of the hallowed 5 cubes.
What to watch for:
+ An utter disregard for physics, that usually gets explained with some manner of CGI (like, the bike that can ride on the side of buildings, after some sort of pocket-sized thermonuclear gyroscope is activated).
+ Constant vascillation between TOTAL techno-dominance, and a bizarre lack of technology. They’ve got DNA scanners, but not a whiff of RFiD or any sort of GPS tracking? We had LoJack in the 1990’s people — something tells me 50-100 years in the future will be able to keep track of packages they’re willing to hire expensive couriers for.
+ The most colorful vision of the future that’s maybe ever been committed to film (or digital effects or whatever). Whereas most futuristic dystopian existences are bleak and grey, Ultraviolet manages to pull from a color pallette that looks like it was borrowed from the folks at TRL.
+ Cameron Bright — the little kid from X3 (the one who can de-mutant mutants), as a little kid who can de-vampire the vampires (oh yeah, by the way — that’s why Milla Jovovich is so bad-ass, she’s basically a vampire). If you’re scoring at home, this kid Cameron Bright has been in movies for about 3 years, and already played a reincarnated kid twice (in Godsend and Birth) and played the same “key to the future of civilization” role twice. In under 3 years.
Somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, Haley Joel Osment, is sitting in a corner of his parents’ mansion, with an awkwardly-cracking voice, screaming “Pay it forward” over-and-over
2 Comments
Every battle sequence is a circle of guys attacking Ultra Violet. Over and over again. The evil stormtroopers, the yakuza, the vampires, etc. I would say they should have called this movie battle circles or something.
I still haven’t figured out how this movie slowed down with a 95 minute running time, but somehow it actually does. Worth a watch though for the repeated circle fights alone.
This movie definitely needs to be about 75 minutes. It was way too long, and the fight scenes were pretty repetitive. A couple other things to notice:
Every time there was a shot of Milla Jovovich’s face, it was done in a sort of soft focus effect that looked straight out of the pages of Penthouse. Very irritating.
Did anyone else think she was going to yell “Cursor, draw me a car!” when she needed to get somewhere fast?
The scar on the kid’s eyebrow switched sides at least once.
And finally, the crappy CG in this movie is worth a mention. Just not good.
I’d say a solid 3 cubes.