All the people who criticized ULTRAVIOLET during its brief theatrical release earlier this year took it to task for sometimes resembling a video game, a comic book and/or a cartoon.

But that’s total B.S. The movie always resembles a video game, a comic book and/or a cartoon.

Still in ass-kickin’ RESIDENT EVIL mode, Milla Jovovich stars as Violet, a pawn in the “blood wars” between humans and hemophages, the latter being those infected by a virus that made them supercharged and gave them vampire teeth. There’s not much story here, beyond Violet having to protect a creepy boy who’s wanted by both sides for his amazing voodoo powers. It’s all an excuse for high-octane, gravity-defying, techno-scored fightin’ and chasin’ with Red Bull-infused pacing.

The movie looks pretty cool with all its curve-huggin’ costumes, huge weapons and candy-coated color scheme, but it’s all so artificial and green-screened to death. Even the actors – one of the very few real things not added in post – have a glazed-donut look to them that makes them look like they were in FINAL FANTASY. Writer/director Kurt Wimmer – who made the decent 2001 cult fave EQUILIBRIUM with, ironically, too much story – tries so gosh-darned hard to make ULTRAVIOLET be the Coolest Movie Ever that he ends up making Not Even the Coolest Movie I’ve Seen This Week.

In other words, it verges on becoming a parody of itself. Wait, scratch that. Within the first 10 minutes, it does become a parody of itself. I think it’s the point where CGI fairy dust twinkled across a closeup of Milla’s eyes when she removes her sunglasses. To be honest, I had to call it quits after 30 minutes; the pain was just too much to bear. What’s it say about a movie’s quality when I can’t sit through its full 90 minutes, but I can spend about twice the time reading its novelization in its entirety? –Rod Lott

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 14th, 2006 at 9:48 am and is filed under Whatnot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.