Ultraviolet (Widescreen Edition)
by Kurt Wimmer
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DVD details
Actor: Cameron Bright, Ida Martin, Milla Jovovich, Nick Chinlund, Sebastien AndrieuDirector: Kurt Wimmer
Brand: Sony
Writer: Kurt Wimmer
Producer: Charles Wang
Producer: John Baldecchi
Producer: Louis Sit
Producer: Pauline Chan
Producer: Rita Fung
Producer: Sue Jett
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-06-27
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Ultraviolet (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Ultimate idiotic art movie
Summary: 1 Stars
"Ultraviolet" is set in some near-future dystopia in which mankind is split between normal humans and "hemophages" - superhuman but short lived freaks created when an ancient virus was rediscovered and accidentally released. With vampire-like teeth, HP's are easy to spot, and since they don't wear any gear to protect themselves from a virus they've already got, they're hard to miss even without being the most overstyled characters on screen. Hunted down by "Arch-Minister Daxus", the HP's strike back - it's the "Blood War". Violet is one of best HP's warriors, capable of mowing down Daxus's troops, breaking into his most secure facilities and possessing the flattest abs on Earth. Violet has stolen a new weapon capable of exterminating the HP's, but she finds that the weapon is a young boy named Six (Cameron Bright). It's not clear how he's a danger to the HP's, but the script wisely accepts that ambiguity, and soon everybody wants Six dead. Obeying a deep maternal instinct, Violet turns against everybody else to protect Six.
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN A DECENT MOVIE IF: Reading my own synopsis, it's easy to see how UV could have rocked, which makes it at least as easy to list the sins (multitudinous here) that killed it. In fact, "Ultraviolet" wastes little time before proving itself one of the single most preposterous movies ever made, a botch on every level - sci-fi actioner or even cautionary fable.
Wimmer was supposedly deposed by the studio which released a chopped-down version, but what's left in the mix - like an HP - looks too inherently wrong to have been cured by simply extra footage. The amateurish script kicks off with embarrassingly expository dialog ("As you know our campaign against the hemophages has been highly effective") and garish set-design. It's downhill from there.
UV is supposedly set in the 21st century. I can accept widely varying visions of how this century will look by the time it's half-over, consistency requires that one society remain within a single vision. In UV, however, we still have cars, helicopters and firearms even though mankind has created devices that manipulate gravity and otherwise bend relative dimensions in space (Violet can store scads of weaponry in some sort of personal hyperspace - allowing her to single-handedly stage her own rip-off of the famous "lobby scene" from the first "Matrix" movie without being weighed down by some big duffle bag or having to wear anything that might obscure her superhuman abs; the humans possess this technology as well, with "Six" being carried around in an attaché case looking like a slightly outsized Macbook). Any civilization advanced enough to re-write the laws of gravity and relative dimensions would have gotten past submachine pistols, rotary-wing aircraft or Buicks. The world of "Ultraviolet" isn't so much advanced as "futuristic" - it looks very mod without actually being a plausible vision of an era set beyond our own. Even the HP's amount to less of a plot element than a plothole. The HP virus is extremely infectious - a point made well at the beginning of the flick when one of Daxus's men realizes that an unfortunate HP splattered him with its blood. Unfortunately, this otherwise good scene is almost as fatally infected as the henchman, since it occurs inside the humans' blood bank. Perhaps the HPs - who broke in without an exit strategy - intended a suicide mission to infect the blood. The problem is that if the virus is that infectious, HP's wouldn't need to get to the humans' blood supply, they could just infect whole neighborhoods. Humans wear all sorts of facial covers, but expose skin which proves sufficiently vulnerable to the HP virus.
UV fails as an actioner because it's astoundingly arbitrary. Daxus's hordes fire hundreds of bullets at Violet without scoring a hit - even when she's directly in their line of fire - while they fall in human waves under Violet's guns. In a similar scene, Daxus faces off three armed HPs by himself, and dispatches them with a miracle machine pistol that can fire a fatal shot to each of three men in a single three-short burst, even when they fire first. (This is most obvious in sword fighting scenes where hordes of enemy swordsmen are clearly swinging AWAY from Violet.) Because the script can scare up few characters to pit against Violet, it's forced to throw at her large numbers of faceless hordes at her from the beginning. Costumes aside, all fight scenes pit Violet against large numbers of apparently well trained and armed troops who simply cannot kill her. In the ultimate of the flick's idiot-scenes, Violet is encircled by hostile rival HPs who are too stylishly duked out to realize that in encircling Violet with their guns drawn, they're targeting each other. The script offers no explanation for its unbalanced lethality, instead drawing it to our attention when Violet warns Six that their enemies "will kill you without even thinking". Putting aside the obvious joke that UV could do with fewer thoughtless killers, despite the firepower expended at that point and the stakes involved, "Ultraviolet" was surprisingly short on death, as if the film was so eager to kill without a thought that that the script had simply forgotten to kill anybody. Daxus flops as a villain because he doesn't do much in a flick that defines its heroes and villains more in terms of style than good or evil deeds. True, the plot has Daxus's ministry paralleling the actions of the WWII genocide, but that happens in the flick's brief expository prolog. The bulk of the movie only shows the ministry getting its desserts for that prolog, and not doing much to deserve that reception. In other words, despite his sneers and army of minions (and despite none-too-subtle clues that identify Daxus with the religious-right), Daxus begins the movie as a victim, not the villain.
In short, "Ultraviolet" is a flick that's horrible and never stops reminding you of that fact.
Description of Ultraviolet (Widescreen Edition)
SET IN THE LATE 21ST CENTURY, A SUBCULTURE OF HUMANS EMERGESWHO HAVE BEEN MODIFIED GENETICALLY BY A VAMPIRE-LIKE DISEASEGIVING THEM ENHANCED SPEED, INCREDIBLE STAMINA & ACUTEINTELLIGENCE. AS THEY ARE SET APART, THE WORLD IS PUSHED TO CIVIL WAR.Bestsellers in DVD
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