In the Name of the King - A Dungeon Siege Tale
by Uwe Boll
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DVD details
Actor: Jason Statham, John Rhys-Davies, Kristana LokenDirector: Uwe Boll
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 127 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-04-15
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of In the Name of the King - A Dungeon Siege Tale
DVD Review: Opinions from a Uwe Boll Novice
Summary: 2 Stars
I'll start right out by saying that, though I've done my fair share of IMDB research, I've never actually sat through a complete showing of a Uwe Boll movie before. Of course, Dungeon Siege being the only game I've ever played that has been given the dubious honor of Herr-Boll's treatment, I had to give this bloated flick the once over. Join me on my own "epic" quest to understand exactly what happened to the last few hours of my life.
==SOURCE MATERIAL==
Dungeon Siege is practically a beat-em-up game that masquerades as an RPG. (For definitions on these acronyms, look elsewhere.) The game is undeniably fun in the same vein that Diablo was fun because you killed evil monsters and got better loot to kill more evil monsters. The game featured vast, colorful landscapes, interesting creatures, and (watch out!) some very unique DUNGEONS to explore with your character and his/her motley crew of NPC helpers. The basic story of the game was that the Kingdom of Ehb is under (watch out!) SIEGE by Orc-like Krug for some unknown reason and you, a simple farmer, are caught up in the fight when the ravenous hordes kill/kidnap your family.
==THE CAST==
As you can infer from the paragraph above, this game is not something that comes pre-loaded with all the character backstory, history, and setting needed to conduct a swords-and-sorcery epic. Still, Uwe Boll has managed to create a Kingdom of sorts that in some ways hearkens back to the original look and feel of the Dungeon Siege game. The opening town of Stonebridge, for instance, kind of reminds me of the actual opening village from the computer game. Unfortunately the opening sequences feature Ray Liotta groping Leelee Sobieski against cuts of CGI castle exteriors with lighting and lens flares stolen directly from Minas Tirith composites.
But I digress ...
The story in this movie follows the basic plot of the game. Our main character is a stoic farmer named Farmer played by Jason Statham. He goes by the name Farmer because he is a farmer. There is a fleeting reference made to the fact that he believes men "become what they do ..." or something like that. Thankfully it seems the Farmer is the only man in the Kingdom of Ehb that follows this rationale. (It would really suck to have a legion of 1000 soldiers all named Soldier.) The Farmer lives with his wife Solanna (Played by the fawnish Claire Forlani) and their son whose name is of no consequence.
His neighbor is a talkative, boorish old man played by Ron Perlman. His character is named Norick and he has known Farmer for a very long time. Apparently Norick had "adopted" Farmer when he was just a boy. Norick talks about wanting to enlist in the King's army because he finds the simple joys of tending the crops somewhat boring.
Speaking of the King, he's played by Burt "The Bandit" Reynolds who apparently thinks he's in simultaneously a western or a daytime soap opera. The King is served by Merick, his court Magus played by John Rhys-Davies who adds some much needed style to this picture. (There are also an assortment of useless guards and generals that add nothing to the overall movie.)
Opposing the good people of Ehb are the evil sorcerer Gallian, played by Ray Liotta, who, under any other circumstance probably could have made this role work. I get the feeling he walked onto the set and told Uwe Boll he was going to play a sexually frustrated frat boy with magical, swirling cloud powers and the director said "Action!" Gallian commands the vicious Krug in his bid to take over the Kingdom and employs the King's zany nephew Fallow in his scheme. Fallow is played by Matthew Lillard who acts drunk all the time and probably was. Out of all the cast members, he seems to have the most fun. Merick's daughter (played by Leelee Sobieski) also shows up sometimes.
Here in this list of actors and actresses lies the fundamental question: How did Uwe Boll enlist so many talented people to work on his project? It's common knowledge that his movies are all ... questionable. People like Statham, Rhys-Davies, Perlman, and even Burt Reynolds can't be that hard up for cash. I know there are contracts to fill, but still! My personal assumption is that these people simply wanted the experience of working with Uwe Boll just to see what it was really like. So many of them are stone-faced and uninterested in what's going on that it actually sort of engages the audience in a macabre way. The suspension of reality in this movie becomes the suspension of your OWN reality. You actually begin to believe you're on the set with these actors, suffering through it alongside them.
For all it's worth, Jason Statham sticks to his guns and delivers a fairly good performance in a role that demands no more from him than a few good sword fights. Ron Perlman generally looks like he's only slightly amused by his surroundings. Burt Reynolds and Ray Liotta are both hilariously out of place making their performances even more grotesquely enjoyable. About the only thing that fits is John Rhys-Davies as the kindly Magus who sometimes has a useful thing to add to a conversation, albeit through poorly written dialogs.
==THE MOVIE==
This is a film that begs, borrows, cheats, and steals from every other great fantasy epic up to and including the Lord of the Rings. From this series it gleans camera shots, atmospheric lighting, production designs, and generally mimicks everything that made LOTR good, or at least memorable. The fight scenes against the Krug are going to immediately call forth memories the Fellowship's battles and of Helm's Deep. King Konried's castle halls seem to be designed by the dwarves of Moria.
Speaking of dwarves ...
In the Dungeon Siege game there were dwarven mines to explore along with your standard crypts and dungeons. There were also goblin hideouts with ingenious "steampunk" inventions like clockwork centurions and magic-powered flamethrower crossbows! Boll nixes all of these quirks and eccentricities for a world that basically resembles medieval Wales with the addition of forest nymphs. I hasten to mention that there is only one true dungeon setting in the whole of this "Dungeon Siege Tale" and it serves as little more than a place for Gallian to threaten the impish Duke Fallow.
Back on topic ...
The movie suffers from several mishaps covering the fields of writing, editing, and general direction. I've included my top ten favorite examples from a list I kept throughout my showing of this movie.
1. Ron Perlman is a very large man best suited for heavy melee combat who is given a pick-axe to fight with along with a bow and arrow setup.
1.5. The main character is a farmer named Farmer.
2. There is a confrontation between Merick and Norick early in the movie where the former purposely gets in the latter's way and moves to question him. There is a buildup of suspense that should lead to a scuffle or at least a shouting match between these two men but leads to ... nothing. The scene cuts to Farmer looking pissed off by himself.
3. Most battle scenes suffer from disorienting jump cuts. I anticipate an argument that this "technique" creates a real sense of chaos and confusion when in actuality it just makes people dizzy.
4. Norick and Bastian (Will Sanderson's useless character) fall off a crude rope bridge toward a river below them. There is a cut to Farmer running down a hill to help them and then a cut back to the aforementioned pair IN the river. Where's the splash?
5. King Konried speaks to the survivors of Stonebridge after the Krug attack at the beginning of the movie and asks for volunteers to join the army and help them fight back. Farmer tongue-lashes the King by saying the King's armies should have protected his family when the Krug attacked, but were instead guarding the castle. The problem is pretty much left at that and not addressed afterward.
6. The movie's first main army-on-army clash takes place in a heavily wooded forest with horrible visibility and overall fighting conditions which is bordered by ... a large open field.
7. There are numerous references to God as well as "gods."
- Early on Farmer says "People say God watches over the innocent."
- At the beginning of the movie Merick witnesses the buildup of Gallian's army and says, "May the gods save us."
-Later on Merick quips the classic "God save the king!"
In short, the movie is inconsistent and all over the ballpark with which culture it's trying to emulate / poke fun at.
8. At one point there are Ninjas.
9. Fencing with broadswords.
10. Several sections of Manos-grade dialog mar the otherwise sturdy performances of Davies and even Matthew Lillard. Shameless theft of fantasy conventions overall.
There are frequent moral quips made by characters including one-liners about virtue, liberty, darkness, honor, vengeance, and seaweed. Unfortunately none if it is cohesive and there are no volumes of written fiction to fall back on for explanation. There is very little backstory given and as far as we know the Kingdom of Ehb comprises about 1000 people. Establishing shots of large cities and surrounding villages might help that slight little nag.
At the end of the movie I made an astonishing discovery: Uwe Boll killed almost every big name actor he had in the movie. Ron Perlman died fairly early in the second act. Burt Reynolds died in battle. John Rhys-Davies died fairly close to the end of the film. Ray Liotta died at the very end. I think it might actually have been his intention to anger audiences at killing off these characters. It's a gigantic ego trip to be able to say, "I killed (all of the above) in my movie!" It's also exceptionally cheap.
On the movie as a whole I can only say this: There is a plot, setting, and characters. The pacing could be better and the writing borders on inept, but at least it follows your general movie-making formula so I guess that's something. Hiring a competent editor (or possibly shooting more coverage) might have vastly improved this hastily chopped buffet of sap.
==EXTRAS==
The "behind the scenes" featurette is basically four separate clips filmed on a camcorder of actors standing around reading the script or hanging on wires in the middle of doing "stunts." There are a few shots of Uwe "The Man, The Myth, The Legend" Boll strutting around pretending to direct, but other than that it's a sorry excuse for a special feature. I was really hoping for a commentary track.
There are supposedly extended and deleted scenes also available, but I couldn't bring myself to watch them.
==THE FINAL WORD==
I can't say I could do better, because I don't know the first thing about shooting, directing, editing, or producing a movie. I'm tempted to believe that this romp is the result of one man's obsessive nature. I have no doubt Uwe Boll truly loves movies and what he does. The problem is some people really like doing what they do, but they're still not good at it. It's like the old joke: What do you call a guy who graduates last in his class in medical school?
Doctor.
Still, this movie could be stripped down and rebuilt as a B-grade fantasy slash fest by a graduate film school student and fare better on the critic's scoreboard than any Hollywood-budgeted Uwe Boll kindergarten nightmare project ever would. Boll is on record saying that he is the only "true genius" making movies these days. One can only speculate if he's joking or if escalating commitment in his argument against his myriad of critics has seriously made him that delusional. He may also simply operate on a higher plane of existence than the rest of the world.
If Boll were smarter he would stop trying to market his video game knock-offs as true cinema and start selling them as "Bad Uwe Boll Movies" for their sheer, pathetic entertainment value. Charging $20 for this DVD, even at Wal-Mart is a criminal enterprise. There is about $6 worth of entertainment in this box and at least a week's worth of use using the DVD as a coaster for your beer while you watch a real film.
Description of In the Name of the King - A Dungeon Siege Tale
The life of a simple family man named Farmer (Jason Statham) is changed forever when a horrifying army of animal-like warriors known as Krugs who are controlled by the evil Gallian (Ray Liotta) invade his village murder his son and kidnap his wife. Farmer sets out on a momentous journey to get his wife back and along the way encounters magic and adventure as the quest soon reveals his real destiny in the kingdom.System Requirements:Running Time: 127 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/SWORD & SORCERY Rating: PG-13 UPC: 024543509110 Manufacturer No: 2250911Bestsellers in DVD
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