ULTRAVIOLET

Directed by Kurt Wimmer

Starring Milla Jovovich

Reviewed by Byron Merritt

THUMBS DOWN FILM REVIEW RATING!

Milla Jovovich appeared in one of my all-time favorite sci-fi action comedies (The Fifth Element), but she also holds the title of "Most Overused Female Actress" in some really shoddy flicks (Resident Evil, Dummy, and Return to the Blue Lagoon just to touch on a few). So I hesitate whenever I see her name attached to a title. Perhaps her agent needs to be a bit more selective when handing her manuscripts.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to say her unfortunate role selections seem to have no end in sight with the addition of ULTRAVIOLET to her sagging film repertoire.

Vampires (aka Hemophages) have been done to death, but I don’t mind that. If a story is interesting and contains vampires, hey, that’s fine by me. But shoving Milla into a body-fitting, white leather outfit and having her kick butt in almost every scene makes me think that much more could’ve been made out of this film rather than just a vampiric female ruffian who’s deadly with a blade. Swinging swords and Matrix-like action sequences were all one gets to see here ...that and some really bad CGI (harkening back to the days of TRON).

The story of vampires and humans battling for supremacy is nothing new to film, too, and it would’ve been nice to see more character development surrounding Milla’s Violet character and that of the main antagonist, Vicecardinum Ferdinand Daxus played by Nick Chinlund. But we just are led to believe that the two hate each other because they’re on opposite sides of the human/vampire equation. Or are they? It seems the scriptwriters/filmmakers couldn’t make up their minds about that either. What a mess.

The story tries to pull a sympathetic chord with the audience by explaining that Violet lost a child in-utero, so when she starts feeling empathy for Six (Cameron Blight), a young boy who carries a virus that can wipe out all vampires (or can he?), we (the audience) are supposed to support her decision not to kill the very child who could kill her. But the emotional impact is nil, again, since almost all of the film time is dedicated to swordplay, killing, and showing us how nice Milla looks in her leathers while decapitating a few hundred bad guys at a time.

There have been comparisons made between Ultraviolet and AEON FLUX. I’ve seen and rated both of these films and found the latter much more entertaining than the former. Although both films had deadly women as their prime protagonists, Aeon Flux actually had a story behind it with some intriguing concepts, while Ultraviolet simply put a futuristic bent on a worn-out theme.

Click here for the Ultraviolet movie trailer!