I'm not sure if Ultraviolet is worse because it's a terrible movie or a huge disappointment.
You see, Kurt Wimmer, Hollywood screenwriter and auteur behind the fantastic Equilibrium, was due to make another amazing dystopian sci-fi movie. Equilibrium had been the kind of movie most sci-fi action fans had longed for and it's easy pace, excellent character pieces, and avoidance of bludgeoning the audience with its backstory made it one of the finest and most satisfying movies I've ever seen. Christian Bale more than carried his weight and was supported by an excellent cast.
Ultraviolet is dead-set in opposition to everything that Equilibrium stood for and, as such, is a painful, heartbreaking experience for people who have seen the latter. It's much akin to being a child and waking on Christmas morning to find that all your presents have been replaced with boxes filled with shit, your stocking is filled with shit, your parents have been replaced with huge piles of shit, and the world outside has become nothing but a raging torrent of human excrement. But in a bad way.
The film goes wrong from its opening moments, signalling its imcompetence with a long montage of fake Ultraviolet comic book covers. In a comic movie, this might be seen as tacky but reasonable. In what is supposed to be a bleak dystopian vision, it sets the stage for hokey bullshit and style over substance. It also plants its anime-inspired aesthetic flag early and signals that the movie will be nothing more than a series of action scenes and bad cliches.
The story is, for the most part, totally incomprehensible. It revolves around an embittered nurse, played by the always-horrible Milla Jovovich, who has contracted a human-generated pathogen-spread vampirism that shortens the life, though they never bother to adequately explain that in the theatrical cut, who is waging war on the Nazi-like human forces that have exterminated her people to stop them from finishing the job. She attempts to steal their ultimate weapon, which turns out to be a child, and then makes a series of unintelligible decisions that lead from fight scene to fight scene in a manner that suggests the central narrative was never a major factor in the screenwriting.
So, Violet goes on to bloodlessly kill faceless troops in dozens of vignettes that revolve around what a badass a former nurse is when turned into a vampire, making you wish that had found a vampire soldier played by an actual actor to fill the main role. The damaged woman instead moves through the beautiful computer-enhanced setpieces that only prove how far style passed substance in Wimmer's construction of this film after the low-budget tension of Equilibrium. Oh, it's all very good-looking, but it's like a commercial for car insurance and everything that worked about Equilibrium stands out like a sore thumb as abyssmal in this movie. The gun kata is abhorent and out of place, the use of swords in a contemporary setting is braindead, the stylized action is annoying and over-the-top, and every action trick feels like a gimmick saved up from years of Cyberpunk roleplaying game sessions to be used in this movie, whether or not it makes any sense or is even a good idea. And there's virtually none of those in this film.
Despite the fact that it's really one of Milla Jovovich's better performances, an accolade that means absolutely nothing, it's still hard to watch her scenes or take her seriously as the terrible, overwrought dialogue is delievered flatly by her or anyone else. Cameron Bright does his usual thing as the strange, quiet child actor, but adds very little, not that he could, and Nick Chinlund and William Fichtner try to pull their weight, but the strain is too much when the material is so stupid.
The glossy, big-budget looks can't cover how terrible this movie is at the heart and it pains me to think that I used to have so much respect for this man when he obviously can't write his way out of a fucking broom closet.
All I can hope is that someday I get to punchfuck Kurt Wimmer's face until I get an explanation and apology for this day-glo abortion shitpile, a refund, and a promise that this visual Holocaust will never happen again.
