ULTRAVIOLET
Another review?! Yeah, I know. I should do this more often, but I tend to get caught up in NOT doing it. Anyways, this post I will cover the first movie I've seen in a theater in over 8 months. UltraViolet. I gave it 6 bad points out of 7, and was too depressed by it to even think of something witty like my previous entries (and yes, those were attempts to be witty).
OK, I'll do the nice thing and not just hit it's low points,but go out and compliment it's high points, though they are quite rare. Well, the action was well coreographed, the punches, the kicks, the flips, the throws, all the close combat action was superb. In fact, the gun fighting was also very interesting, and had some original ideas. They showed a couple cool ideas, camera working was well done on the fights as well. A personal preference and my freind argues that it's a flaw, rather than a preference... They have a couple of zoomed in, and sped up shots, to make it 'cooler'. The close up shots are from the thigh up, and often stop shortly above the head, so the sword fighting and whatnot are barely in screen. Personal preference. Moving on.
Story, was great, but poorly executed... wait, that's an understatement. It was like, they took the notes for the general story idea, and used it as the movie's script. Only the bare essentials. They didn't say anything that didn't have a purpose, that was brutally obvious. Everything that was said, was there for a reason, every scene. I'll spoil the first 2 minutes of the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it, sorry. Spoilers are littered throughout the whole thing, but this a very spoilerrific spoiler.
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Spoilers
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So this plane is flying overhead, dropping these giant black spheres, dropping but then they change course and fly into the side of a huge skyscraper (ok, that's cool). The orbs are rolling down the room, dstroying walls, tables, etc, and before reaching the people at the end of the room, they open up and colapse and men in black uniforms (ninjas) run out and kill them, one in a row, slash slash slash slash slash , and then each, in that same order, sheath their swords, sheath, sheath sheath, sheath sheath. It felt very fake, rehersed, and it was sped up to make it faster, and look 'cooler', where as to me, it just looked 'cheesier'. They break through a giant metalic door with explosives, and run into a room, stand in the middle between some pillars, (large, maybe 5 ft in diamiter), and stand there for a long couple of moments.
Then, he removes his goggles' front lens portion, assuming to get a better look of things... then he goes "It's a trap!" and litterally, 15~20 guys step out from behind the pillars, surrounds them, and opens fire. (what?) Then, two official looking men examine the corpse, and one picks up something off the body of the leader, and they have a discussion which went like
person 1 "They were after the blood. What was going to be their escape route?"
person 2 "Unless they weren't planning to take the blood from the bloodbank, they wanted to put something IN to it."
*person 2 glances over at person 1, seeing blood on his hands, and looks at him"
Person 2 "You've been infected." *shoots him in the head*
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OK, now lets review this shall we? wait, first, lets go over some of what they cover shortly afterwards. They say that in the near future, they discover this strain of disease that's been around forever, but never harming us. They research it and try to turn it into something that would help us, make us stronger, faster, etc, but instead, they made it super easy to contract, and it was very bad for your health. This formed a sort of holocaust against these people, causing them to be forced to wear armbands that let others know they were 'infected', and then, special camps, then they were just 'never heard from again'. Then a bloodwar was started, between the infected, and the humans.
This disease can be contracted by merely touching it, as it portrays many times, in the whole movie. But, if this were the case, don't you think security at a blood bank would be tighter? Well, it was quite tight, and it was an ambush, but they could have easily shot the giant glass container above them and ruined the blood by touching it. Also, why would the two (or was it three?) men walk up and start handling things? I mean, even if you didn't expect them to be 'infected', you know it exists and how easy it is to contract it, it should be protocol. They were shot up, bleeding, and there's a VERY DANGEROUS virus/disease, whatever it is, going around, there's a blood war for god's sake *sigh*. You'd think the bloodbank, even if it was a trap, would have been wiser as to it's placement, rather than at the top of a (or the middle of) a skyscraper.
They also, knew that there was a blood war, and knew it would definately be a hot place for them to be. Let's carelessly, casually walk around these infected bodies (which we shot with bullets, and splattered) and pick things up, without gloves. Oh, and when my freind, after picking up something and had blood on his hands, let's shoot him with a gun, balistic, bullet, splater, who cares! It's only infected blood! *giggles* Ok, I'm over it, thats the spoiler portion, lets keep moving.
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Spoilers
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The CG in this movie was rediculous. They had worked SO hard on her suit, her hair, her outfit, and her guns, but when it came to everything else, I had to laugh, it was horrid. The end scene, without any spolers, has a fire inside a building that looks like the Epcot Center. It's a giant sphhere made up of traingles. There's a fire inside, that looks like something that was pasted from a cheap Animated Gif, out of Duke Nukem 3d. A pixelated, cheesy fire. There were no textures on any of the surface, when a gun shot up a building, the debris looked so bad. It looked like some CG scenes, that were suppose to be guidelines, to which, the texture, lighting detail, etc were to improve upon, but they never got to it. A whole city, of one color, one texture, smooth, and they all look the same. I don't even remember if the light reflected off of them, thinking back. It was as if you played a First Person Shooter and turned the graphics on lighting, texture, and everything to it's minimal setting... and then lower.
The execution of the story (as I mentioned earlier) was poor. This movie was predictable beyond description. They briefly mention one minute thing, only to have it be a reason for an event at the end. "I lost my baby when I got infected", is what she tells you at the beginning of the movie. So, she has this maternal bond with this child she finds, almost immediately, for no reason, and is willing to die for him, even though she knows nothing about him. With her freinds telling her otherwise, and every reasonable thing telling her not to, she does anways, betrays her freinds and runs from the Law, and from her Allies. How very believable.
The Dialogue was also horrid, where only what's needed to be said is, and there was very little intraction between any of the characters. And some of the dialogue felt out of place, where the child was speaking very (in my opinion) out of character. He was suppose to be isolated and grew up in a lab, but talks as if he's been around the block, knows the slang, and has a good graps of the english language. "You can either watch me die, or let me see you do the same." What the hell? Where does he come up with sentence like that? He's like 10, and I don't believe, at all, that you would be talking like that. If you've seen the movie (and if you have, I'm sorry), you know what I mean.
I was told this was written and directed by the same man who did Equallbrium, and you can tell. However, I liked Equalibrium, with all it's flaws, but it's not one of my favorite movies. It has the same problems (and it's exponentially more obvious in this movie) and.. ugh, let's move on. The movie was an hour and a half long, and it seemed like it needed to be a 2~3 hour movie, to get in all the story it wanted to tell. I hope, that this movie looked so bad and rushed, is because it WAS rushed. If they told me it was pushed out a early, I would believe it. 6 out of 7 bad things about this movie, Oh god, there was no order to this review, but yeah, I didn't like it , at all.
EDIT: Oh yeah, this was the worst movie I've seen since Aliens v.s. Predator. In fact, I might even say they're tied for worst move I've ever seen. =(