Ultraviolet Review
“Hello, my name is Violet, and I was born into a world you may not understand.”
So Violet tells us in the first of her many voice-overs in Ultraviolet. The idea that we wouldn’t understand her world seems to be a foundational element of her character as she spends a lot of time explaining it. Indeed, concern for our ignorance seems to be core to everyone else’s character as well, seeing as every conversation that occurs consists of little more than the participants telling each other what has happened, what is happening and what might be about to happen. At one point a character feels the need to explain, “I thought I was dead.”, and he’s not talking figuratively, he actually means that he thought he was literally dead — while thinking about it. It’s a remarkable line, but by the time it is said, you’re so numb to the characters’ endless exposition that you barely notice it. The whole film seems to feel the need to talk about itself all the time as some form of reassurance that it actually exists. I can hardly blame it for being insecure. There’s very little of substance here. It’s a collection of sci-fi/horror cliches and derivative special effects sequences that are barely held together by the flimsy plot and the ever present expositional voiceovers from Violet. The film can’t support its own weight and watching it is a mental exercise in trying to hold it all together in your head. If Ultraviolet was food, it would be soup. Thin soup.
You need a spoon to watch this movie.
If you’re sensitive to the use of language then you might also need a bucket. We all know that Milla Jovovich isn’t exactly a fluid actress, but in other roles, such as Joan of Arc, or Fifth Element, her stilted delivery has added to the other-worldy nature of the character being played. Here, the script-writer seems to be playing some form of practical joke on her, feeding her lines like “This is war, a war to the death” and presumably laughing up their sleeve when she actually says them. It’s not just her character, either, as all the dialogue is pretty much as clumsy. The script is a mixture of clanging ESL-speak and incongruous slang usage that could have been written by an Eastern-European who has learned English by watching Jerry Springer. This is a bit odd, seeing as Kurt Wimmer, the writer and director, is American and has a previous credit for writing on “The Thomas Crowne Affair” remake, which I remember as being pretty coherent.
By the way, according to IMDB, Kurt Wimmer’s nickname is “The Wimmer”. I only mention is as, compared to this film, that nickname is a work of creative genius and possibly worth considering as a point in Mr Wimmer’s favour.
So what is going on here? Despite all the exposition, I’m honestly not sure, as much of it still didn’t make sense. Apparently, some government lab messed around with a virus and it inevitably escaped. This virus happens to turn people into vampires, fangs and all, but they don’t do much vampire stuff. Not that it makes much difference when you see the technology they “somehow” have. Our vampire chums have special wristbands that can apparently store physical objects in a form that has no size or mass, and they can reconstitute those objects instantly. They also have belt-buckles that can change the direction of gravity for the wearer (and, if they happen to be riding a motorbike, for that too). No-one would have had much of an opportunity to be worried about fangs or blood-drinking or turning into bats if Dracula had been riding motorbikes up the sides of skyscrapers and magically ejecting automatic weapons from his wrists, and vamping is rendered just as irrelevant in Ultraviolet. Perhaps Wimmer should have picked up on that and cut it from the story, but then there wouldn’t have been vampires in it, and we know how the kids love vampires.
Speaking of kids, that brings me onto the worst aspect of the film, the part that turned this from a cheesy but fun sci-fi romp into something rather more like having my teeth drilled — there’s a kid character in this film that…Jesus. I don’t know whether it was the way the script seemed to hit new lows every time Violet and the brat interacted or the fact that his character seemed to be constructed from purest fey, but the only thing that got me through the syrup was the hope that his face would take after Violet’s gravity belt buckle and start gravitationally attracting fists. He’s important to the plot in some way, but although telling you couldn’t really spoil the film any more than watching the damned thing will spoil your life, all I can say is that he didn’t die enough for my liking.
The title sequence shows pages from a comic called Ultraviolet and presumably about the same character. Whether this is an attempt to persuade someone to create said comic, I don’t know. I imagine that it’s either meant to set the viewer in the mindset that they’re about to watch a comic-style movie or it’s a pitiable attempt to cover up a failure to achieve something more realistic. There are a few sequences where the visuals almost pull together into something interesting, but mostly they don’t. The fight scenes are essentially without any tension at all, with Violet generally winning via a mysterious ability to cause her opponents to simply drop dead, presumably via a “too fast to see” sword attack. Yes, I said sword. It’s another one of those visions of the future where they fight with swords, and to hell with more effective and believable futuristic possibilities, like firing sharks from their magic wristbands or something. I could go on as the film is full of this crap, from Violet’s pointlessly colour-changing hair/glasses/clothes to the fact that the baddies wear armour that appears to be made from glass, which doesn’t seem sensible at all, even for sword-wielding future-ninjas, but what do I know?
Let’s see… is there anything good to say? Well, if you like Milla Jovovich, then you’ll be pleased to know that she looks as startlingly beautiful in Ultraviolet as in everything else she’s done. But I’d recommend anything else she’s done over this, and that includes Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Actually, that’s a reasonable summation:
You’re better off watching Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
