Apparently, Christopher Lambert had better things to do than to star in his ho-hum sequel to the hit Mortal Kombat. It's funny how Lambert will do something like Highlander 2, but he won't star in Mortal Kombat 2. Weird. Anyway, his replacement is James (The Warriors) Remar, who is even more woefully miscast as Rayden than Lambert was. That's OK because in my book, a woefully miscast James Remar is better than no James Remar at all. (Besides, Rayden FINALLY fights this time out and even gets to do his patented "Superman" move too.)
Lambert isn't the only person from the first film who didn't bother showing up for Annihilation. Also failing to return to their roles is Bridgette Wilson as Sonya and Linden Ashby as Johnny Cage. I guess Ashby's absence isn't all that surprising since Cage gets annihilated in the very first scene! I can imagine THAT call to his agent. "Hi, we'd love to have
Even though there's only TWO returning actors from the original movie, I've got to give Annihilation props for starting off EXACTLY where the last film ended. It's rare when a movie does that. Shit, they didn't even do that in Return of the Jedi. Anyway the plot has Shao Khan (Brian Thompson from Cobra) coming through the portal of Outworld and trying to take over the world. It's up to the Mortal Kombatants Liu Kang (Robin Shou), Kitana (Talisa Soto), and Rayden (Remar) to stop him and kick anybody's ass that gets in their way.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation's fatal flaw is it's overall tone. What made the original MK flick work was that it more or less felt like a real movie. Annihilation doesn't feel like a movie, it feels like an extended episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. What works in a video game doesn't necessarily work in a movie and characters like Smoke, Cyrax, and Jax just look straight up goofy when they are removed from the game and placed into the cinematic world. Characters like Motaro (Centaur dude) and Sheeva (Four-armed lady) should've been fun, but their appearances carry no weight and they just look stupid. Another thing that kicks the movie in the groin is the pathetic CGI monsters. They make the shitty FX in Spawn look like ILM material. Also, all the fight scenes are marred with incredibly silly looking special effects and obvious stunt doubles. Luckily, those stunt doubles are pretty spectacular and include such soon-to-be-famous action heroes like Ray (Darth Maul) Park and Tony (The Protector) Jaa.
Remar makes it through the flick without cracking a smile, which is admirable under the circumstances. Thompson also puts in a memorable turn as the main hammer-wielding baddie as well. But it is Musetta Vander who steals the movie as the hot as Hell Sindel. Dressed in purple spandex and sporting a mean camel toe, Vander is easily the best looking chick in the movie. (There are a lot of hot chicks in brightly colored spandex in this flick, actually.) Sure, the flick slows down to a crawl at many points, but any part where Musetta's just standing around looking dead sexy is alright by me. There's also an actor named Litefoot in this movie. (So named because he's light on his feet I suppose.)
Say what you will about the directing stylings of Paul Anderson in MK 1, he looks like Orson Welles compared to this flick's director, John Leonetti. He was the cinematographer of the first film and while he's good at the action stuff, he can't shoot a straight dialogue scene to save his life. I know you don't see Mortal Kombat movies for their dialogue scenes, but it's pretty rough going when the movie is filled with such groan inducing lines like, "Do not underestimate the power of the human spirit!"
Shou later starred in such video game movie fair like DOA: Dead or Alive and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li.
Mortal Kombat is one of the best movies based on a video game ever made and will probably remain the best version of a big screen MK movie that one could hope for. (In a PG-13 format that is.) It's got everything a MK fan could want: Kano acting like an asshole, Scorpion saying, "Get over here!", Sub Zero freezing people, Shang Tsung saying "Flawless Victory!" and "Finish Him!", Reptile's cameo, Goro kicking ass, Johnny Cage doing a "Friendship" (leaving his autograph) on Scorpion, etc. It's all here. I think everybody out there who likes the game likes the movie.
All of the performances are spot on. (Well, for a movie based on a video game anyway.) Christopher Lambert makes for a perfectly cheesy Rayden. Lambert gets a lot of incredibly over-the-top lines including, "You're a coward, sorcerer!" and his deadpan delivery (and misplaced French accent) is hysterical. Although he doesn't fight during the tournament (he mostly just hangs back and chills), he's still pretty cool. ('95 was a great year for Lambert. Not only did he appear in this but he also starred in the underrated samurai vs. ninja bloodbath, The Hunted.) Linden Ashby makes for a great Johnny Cage and his cocky wiseass attitude fits the character perfectly. As the villainous Shang Tsung, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa really seems to be having the most fun as he chomps down on the scenery like it's nobody's business.
Director Paul Anderson (who would later go on to direct and/or produce several other movies based on video games such as Resident Evil), films all the fight scenes in an energetic manner and keeps them fresh by cleverly incorporating the settings into the fights. Unfortunately, I gotta take off a star for not being as gory as the video game. (It is PG-13 after all.) We do get a couple good "Fatalities" though. Overall, it's not quite a "Flawless Victory", but it's still one heck of a good time.
I’ve sat here at my computer for the past hour or so trying to form the words that would inform you all of the sheer stupidity and utter awesomeness that awaits you all if you venture out to the theater to see Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. I don’t know quite how to classify this flick. It’s not a sequel to the 1994 Van Damme flick and it’s not really a direct adaptation of the video game either. It just kinda singles out the character of Chun-Li (Kristen Kreuk) and lets her do her own thing while interacting with surprisingly few characters from Capcom’s crazy popular (in the 90’s that is) video game.
Another thing I’m not sure about is whether or not this flick was intended to be a comedy. All I know is I haven’t laughed this hard and long at a movie since Role Models (and I was drunk when I saw that one). One thing I know for sure is that this is the best movie based on a video game since DOA. (If that quote doesn’t get my name plastered on the front of the DVD cover, nothing will.)
The Legend of Chun-Li goes a little something like this: Chun-Li is this concert pianist whose dad has some shady dealings in
That’s what the film is about on the surface. For me though, it was all about Chris Klein. You might remember Klein as the Keanu Reeves wannabe from the American Pie flicks who used to date Katie Holmes before she got brainwashed by Tom Cruise. I personally kinda forgot about the guy myself and more or less wondered going into the theater, “How many people turned this movie down before Chris Klein said YES? 112 maybe?” Those questions were soon washed away once the film began. Klein gives the funniest performance in a motion picture since Chaplin played The Little Tramp.
There’s a scene early on in the film that had me in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. It came when Klein’s character, Interpol Agent Charlie Nash was giving a rundown on M. Bison’s operation to his unit. At one point, he actually breaks the fourth wall and begins delivering the rest of his monologue straight to the audience. Just like King Lear and shit. With his faux-macho posturing, misplaced earnestness, and deadpan stare; he looked like he was auditioning to take over for Ben Stiller in Zoolander 2 or something. Folks, I lost it. And wait until you hear the words, “Nash out!” I defy you not to belly-laugh.
I was surprised to find that the stuff that actually involved Chun-Li was rather well done. The fight scenes benefited from some decent choreography (although not too many actually take place in the street) and director Andrej Bartkowiak (who is making amends for fucking up another video game property, Doom) kept the flick moving at a steady pace. I sorta even liked the way that the script built Chun-Li up as this Charles Bronson/Robin Hood of the slums too. (Does this make her Slumdog Street Fighter?)
Still though, most of the film was excruciatingly dumb. I hated the way all of the characters over-emphasized every little plot point and beat it mercilessly into the ground. (“M. Bison? You mean the head of Shadaloo? The guy who kidnapped your father?”) The ADR was also hella crazy and needlessly interjected and regurgitated plot information that we already figured out two reels ago. There was also an incredibly idiotic scene where Gen is clearly right behind Chun-Li in one scene and then some old woman sends her all the way to Bangkok to find him, which makes zero sense because he was right behind her the whole time. I wanted to scream, “LOOK BEHIND YOU BITCH!” C’mon, there was no need to go all the way to
Sure, there was some supremely shitty stuff in this flick, but there was a lot of stuff that cracked me the fuck up. Like the scene where Chun-Li seduces a lesbian on the dance floor and then lures her into the bathroom so they can beat the shit out of each other. There were also a lot of sepia tone flashbacks that gave the film an authentic 70’s Kung Fu Movie vibe that I really dug. The most batshit insane of these scenes came when we see how a young Bison gained his evil powers: By ripping his baby daughter out of his wife’s stomach with his bare hands! Brilliant! Speaking of brief but memorable gore; we also got a pretty tasty 180 degree head twist too; one of the cooler deaths I’ve seen in a PG-13 movie lately.
There was even a great final scene that ripped off the Joker card scene from Batman Begins. In the end of the film, Gen gives Chun-Li a flyer for a “Fighting Tournament” and tells her she should check it out. (“There’s a guy named Ryu… something who’ll be fighting!”) Folks, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried so be glad somebody else did.
Before we get a legitimate sequel to this film however, I’m hoping that someday soon we’ll get to see a Street Fighter: The Legend of Charlie Nash starring my boy Chris Klein. His performance in this flick is truly one for the books. Can you imagine a whole movie based around this character with Klein center stage? Four Stars would not be enough.
The Video Vacuum
Being the Best Movie Based on a Video Game Since DOA. (Again, I’m desperately trying to get my name on a DVD box here.)
Having the Best Baby-Ripping Scene Since Inside.
Featuring the (Unintentionally) Funniest Performance by a Leading Man This Millennium.
Nash out!
During the early 90’s I spent most of my time playing Street Fighter 2 in the arcade. I probably should’ve been off somewhere thinking about girls or trying to get good grades, but I mostly just played that damned video game. Street Fighter 2 was something of an enigma because nobody ever played Street Fighter 1, and yet Street Fighter 2 was a huge success. SF2 was so big in fact that instead of releasing a Street Fighter 3, the game company Capcom just kept churning out variations on Street Fighter 2 such as Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Street Fighter 2, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and Street Fighter 2: Champion Edition. By the time that an actual Street Fighter 3 DID come out, nobody gave a shit because they were sick and tired of playing countless retreads of Part 2.
After the Mortal Kombat movie was a big hit, Street Fighter was put into production and even though it was based on Street Fighter 2, they just called it Street Fighter. A lot of people bitched and moaned that Ryu and Ken were not the main characters and that Guile (Jean Claude Van Damme) hogged the spotlight. It didn’t really matter to me because I always played as Guile anyway. I could really fuck shit up with his Flash Kick and Sonic Boom. The flick ended up being a big flop and we never got to see an actual Street Fighter 2 movie. (There is another Street Fighter film in production, although it’s not even called Street Fighter 2. Idiots.)
The plot has the evil dictator M. Bison capturing a bunch of hostages and Col. Guile tries to rescue them. Meanwhile characters that only bear a passing resemblance to their video game counterparts show up and stand around and don’t fight each other very often.
While some of the characters look like their original incarnations (like Wes Studi as Sagat) most of them don’t look or act like they did in the video game. In the game, Chun Li was a peasant girl; here she’s a news reporter. In the game, Ken and Ryu were karate students; here they are whiny, back-stabbing arms dealers. In the game, Dhalsim was an Indian mystic; here he’s a meek scientist. In the game, M. Bison was a brawny badass; here he’s... Raul Julia.
The biggest stumbling block about the flick is that it’s hopelessly cheesy, silly and cartoony. It makes the video game look realistic in comparison. Having said that; the best part of the movie is Blanka; the green skinned monster that Bison creates. The filmmakers deftly combined Guile’s story and Blanka’s (in the game, Guile was looking for his POW pal named Charlie and Blanka’s real name was “Carlos”) and if writer/director Steven E. de Souza showed a little bit more ingenuity in the screenwriting department, Street Fighter may have been worthwhile. Still, it’s better than say, the Super Mario Brothers movie.
Another big problem is that middle section of the film is almost completely devoid of fighting. And then when the characters finally DO fight, it’s not in the street, it’s in Bison’s lair. So why was this thing called Street Fighter then? None of the fighting is really memorable and the showdowns between beloved characters from the game are pretty much a letdown as they almost always end abruptly. The final fight between Bison and Guile is the only decent one in the bunch; if only to crack up at Raul Julia’s “skill” as a brawler. Guile did get to do his Flash Kick a few times, so I really can’t complain about it too much. Just don’t get me started on the scene when Bison starts shooting electricity out of his hands like the goddamned Emperor.
At any rate, you can get some laughs by watching Van Damme butcher the English language. His rousing speech to the troops is especially hilarious. “Whoo whants to go hohm and whoo whants to go with MEE!”
Okay ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to play How Bad Is it?
Alright Mitch, just how bad is Max Payne?
Well, Max Payne is probably the worst theatrically released movie based on a video game ever made. Director John (The Omen remake)
Well, we all know how bad most movies based on video games are anyway; but really how bad is Max Payne?
It makes Silent Hill look like Night of the Living Dead.
How are the action scenes?
What action scenes? There are approximately two and a half shootouts in the film; all of which take up about two minutes of screen time.
You mean each shootout is two minutes long?
No I mean the first is about 45 seconds long, the mini-shootout is 15 seconds long and the final shootout runs about a full minute. Let me clue you in to just how little action is in the film: Max Payne doesn’t fire his gun until about the 60 minute mark and the film is only about 95 minutes long if you don’t count the end credits.
What about the plot? Surely if nothing happens in that first hour or so, the plot has to at least…
What plot? Max is looking for the people who killed his wife. He finds them. Along the way he takes this drug that’s kinda like Angel Dust. No it IS Angel Dust because once he takes it, he sees a lot of poorly done CGI angels floating around.
Oh, let’s talk about the CGI angel effects, how bad are they?
They look like unused test footage from
Ouch. How about the performances?
Marky Mark LOOKED the part of Max Payne but sadly whenever he opened his mouth, all bets were off. His annoying lisp ruined any credibility Mark had at making Max a bad ass. It’s not his fault though, he was just woefully miscast. They really shoulda gotten somebody like Michael Madsen instead. Not that anyone else in the cast was much better. It’s a sad thing when Ludacris gives your movie’s best performance.
Well, do you have anything GOOD to say about the movie?
Yeah actually; Olga Kurylenko (star of another bad movie based on a video game, Hitman) is pretty damn sexy looking in the flick. Too bad we only see her naked from the back. (We’ll probably have to wait until the “Unrated” DVD to see her titties.)
So honestly Mitch… How Bad Is Max Payne?
Watching Max Payne is about as much fun as setting fire to your scrotum then putting out the flames with a rusty hammer.
Uwe Boll is (in)famous for making hilarious movies based on video games. Postal marks the first time that he set out to make an INTENTIONAL comedy based on a video game. The problem is that Boll is a heck of a lot funnier when he isn’t trying to be.
Zack Ward (also in Boll’s Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance) stars as Postal Dude, a guy who gets so fed up working at his factory job and putting up with his promiscuous Jabba the Hutt sized trailer trash wife that he goes along with a scam hatched by his uncle (Dave Foley) to steal a truckload of “Krotchey” dolls (think Tickle Me Elmo but shaped like a penis) and sell them on Ebay. What the duo doesn’t know is that the Taliban is also scheming to get their hands on the dolls so they can fill them with bird flu and wipe out
Boll’s humor is all over the map but on the rare occasion when he hits the funny bone, it’s usually pretty good. There is a funny scene early in the film in a welfare office where Ward grabs a number and waits in line. Then a gunman opens fire and kills a lot of people and Ward scurries around stealing the dead people’s numbers so he’ll move to the front of the line.
If Boll had used this scene as an example on how to do black comedy right, things would’ve been okay. Unfortunately, Boll just thinks that people getting shot with automatic weapons is automatically funny. It isn’t, particularly the scenes where a bunch of innocent children get gunned down. Also the film runs at a massive 100 minutes and that doesn’t help much either, especially when most of the good material is weighted towards the first half hour.
While most of Postal is tasteless, crude, or just straight up unfunny, it does feature a lot of shit that I’ve never seen in a film before. How about Verne Troyer getting raped by monkeys? Betcha never seen that before. And you know the phrase “She’s so fat that if you want to fuck her you have to roll her in flour and look for the wet spot”? Well in Postal we actually get to SEE it happen. I’ve always HEARD about it but I’ve never seen it. And this flick will probably go down in history as the only movie in which Dave Foley shows his penis while he takes a massive shit on camera. It also features the world’s first (and probably last) 9/11 “joke”.
A lot of the movie is just plain dumb but it ain't the worst thing that Uwe has done. At least Boll is smart enough to have a scene in which he parodies himself and laments, “I HATE video games!” If anything Postal offers up an opportunity to see Boll’s nuts get blown off, so if you’ve always wanted to see that, you might have to give it a look see.
Osama Bin Laden’s second in command gets the best line in the movie when he says, “The time has come to place our swords into the genitals of the infidels!"
I’ve never played the video game that this movie is based on (probably due to the fact that I still live in an 8 Bit world), but for some reason I always pictured Jason Statham as the cold-blooded assassin Agent 47. Instead, we get Timothy Olyphant, who would’ve been about my 76th choice for the role. In Live Free or Die Hard, Olyphant was a poor substitute for Alan Rickman. In Hitman, he’s even a poor substitute for a CGI video game character.
Agent 47 was plucked out of an orphanage when he was only five years old and trained to kill people by the mysterious “Organization”, a group of assassins would churn out killers so frequently that they have to slap a bar code on the back of their heads just to keep track of ‘em. Anyway, the Organization gives 47 his latest assignment: assassinate the president of
You know when you play a video game and a whole mess of plot comes up and all you have to do to skip over it is press the A button? I wish I could’ve done that with this movie. It’s not that there’s too much plot in this movie (no such thing in a movie based on a video game), it’s just that the plot is nothing you already haven’t seen before, so you might as well skip all of the chit-chat and get to the action. (Even baldies with bar codes have been done before. Remember Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys?)
The subplot where Dougray (the guy who was SUPPOSED to be Wolverine) Scott tracks down 47 all over God’s drab earth (I would say green, but there ain’t nothing green in Russia) really slows things down and Olyphant’s tryst with a Russkie prostitute (Olga Kurylenko, soon to be seen in Quantum of Solace) doesn’t add much to the flick. (Luckily for us, that Communist cooze DOES get totally naked several times and in one scene, takes the brunt end of a riding crop on her bare buns.)
The director, Xavier Gens obviously spent a lot of his time on the couch watching John Woo movies and there’s all the usual slow-mo flashiness, Mexican stand-offs, and muddled machismo you’d expect from a second-rate Woo wannabe action flick. Really though, the film actually works better when it eschews the over-the-top gunplay in favor of nittier grittier kills. The standout set piece is a four-way swordfight on a train that is some of the best swordfighting on a train I’ve seen since the immortal Christopher Lambert samurai vs. ninja flick, The Hunted. Besides that tight little bit of business, we also get some juicy arm chopping, bloody exploding heads, ear ripping and awesome arterial spray, and there’s a pretty great massacre in an elevator scene tossed in there for good measure too.
I was really on the fence during most of Hitman. While I could’ve done without all the “Who set me up?” shenanigans, I enjoyed the action scenes for the most part (especially the close-quarters stuff). The thing that knocked the flick off of the wrong side of the fence was Olyphant’s bland as Hell performance. I know he’s supposed to be an emotionless hitman bred since the age of five to KILL, KILL, KILL, but that doesn’t mean the dude couldn’t emote SOMETHING somehow. Olyphant goes for that smoldering look that says, “I’m pained and complicated”, but the looks he gives are more like he’s saying “I’m pained and constipated.” Had someone with more charisma like Statham or Vin Diesel (who was once attached to star in the film for long enough to score an executive producer credit) been in the lead, Hitman could’ve been worth a shot. With Olyphant behind the trigger, it’s a misfire.
Now many of you are thinking, “Hey Mitch, didn’t Bloodrayne 2 win the quadruple crown of bad movies when it scored the Video Vacuum’s Award for Worst Sequel, Worst Direct to DVD Movie, Worst Movie Based on a Video Game and Worst Film of the Year for 2007, and maybe you probably shouldn’t give Boll another chance?”
Yes, I know and I appreciate your concerns for my well being, but I suffer from an acute congenital birth defect that demands that I MUST see every movie based on a video game that Uwe Boll directs or I will die a horrible death.
Which makes me proud to report that In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is the best movie based on a video game that Uwe Boll’s directed since House of the Dead. I honestly believe that Uwe Boll is the Orson Welles of bad movies based on video games and if House of the Dead was his Citizen Kane; then this is his Magnificent Ambersons.
I don’t know what the heck that analogy means, but if it means that Dungeon Siege is the closest thing to a “good” movie that Boll’s done in a while, then that’s what it means.
Yes, despite the fact that his last theatrical movie, the ORIGINAL Bloodrayne made all of $37, someone had the cajones to actually give Boll a movie camera again.
Basically Jason (Crank) Statham plays a dude named Farmer who is well… a farmer. If you’re wondering WHY the dude would call himself “Farmer”, his wife (Claire Forlani from Mallrats) helpfully explains: “He believes a man should be called by what he does.”
Gotcha.
Anyway, Farmer’s entire family gets wiped out by a bunch of stuntmen in rubber monster suits and his village is burned to the ground. The monsters keep his wife alive however and send her to be a prisoner in evil wizard Ray Liotta’s lava factory. Farmer buries his son (he uses a stone dildo for a headstone) and vows vengeance, so Farmer, Ron Perlman and some reject from TNA Impact go on a quest to save her. Meanwhile King Burt Reynolds’ throne is in jeopardy because his upstart nephew (Matthew Lillard) is in league with Liotta and they plot to murder him.
This leads to several lengthy Lord of the Rings inspired battle scenes in which the peasants, led by Farmer, join up with the King’s men to fight off Liotta’s army of rubber suit monsters. Statham also makes an alliance with a bunch of forest dwelling lesbians led by Bloodrayne herself, Kristanna Loken and learns he’s the rightful heir to the throne before laying the medieval smackdown on Liotta.
We’re talking about medieval swordfights with effects stolen from the Matrix.
We’re talking about some of the best pillaging by stuntmen in rubber suits since Army of Darkness.
We’re talking about Burt Reynolds dressed as a samurai.
We’re talking about the Best Movie Based on a Video Game since Resident Evil: Apocalypse.
It’s no Sword and the Sorcerer but it’s a damn sight better than The Two Towers.
Nobody will argue that this is a good movie, but I laughed as much watching this movie as I did watching Juno, so that alone is worth SOMETHING.
This MAY be based on a video game (that I’ve never heard of, let alone played), but it’s real inspiration is the Lord of the Rings movies. Not only does the roguish hero become king, not only are there a bunch of “tree people” who help fight to save their forest home (I will say that I’d rather watch Kristanna Loken fight than Treebeard any day), not only is there a square off between two magicians, not only does the climax take place on a volcano, but John Rhys-Davies from all three of the Rings movies is in it too. The film also ends with one of those wimpy flute-fueled songs they’re always playing at the Renaissance Festival that for all intensive purposes should be called “The Ballad of Bilbo Farmer”.
Seeing Boll steal things off Peter Jackson and company wholesale is funny enough, but the fact that we never quite know WHEN all this is taking place adds to the humor. I mean parts of the movie resemble Middle Earth, but other scenes look like they came out of Robin Hood. The castle looks like a Medieval Times theme park, and the supporting cast includes ninjas, which were for the most part, few and far between during the Renaissance.
The performances also elicit a lot of chuckles as well. While Statham cruises on his brooding charisma and escapes more or less unscathed, the rest of the cast aren’t as lucky.
Let’s start with Ray Liotta. Now, I’m sure his character had a name, but I’ll be damned if I could remember it, because honestly, Liotta played himself throughout the entire movie. Whenever someone mentioned his character’s name (I know it started with a “G”), I was like who, huh? But when they cut to his character, I was like “Oh Ray Liotta, gotcha!” Now if you were to sit down and make a list of actors capable of playing an evil wizard, Liotta would come in 112th place right between Shaquille O’Neal and Nipsey Russell. Despite the woeful miscasting (or perhaps BECAUSE of it), Liotta is never dull to watch. He more or less plays the same character he did in Unlawful Entry, except his wardrobe is nicer. (His black leather trench coat is pretty badass.) He also gets some truly spectacular dialogue to feast upon like: “I’m beyond good. I’m beyond evil. These are childish ideas!” and “You killed me twice today.” He also does some of the finest work by an actor surrounded by a CGI whirlwind you’ll see all year.
Then there’s the one and only Burt Reynolds as the King. His face is so Botoxed out in this movie that he couldn’t express a single emotion, but just seeing Burt parading around quasi-medieval surroundings while dressed as a samurai… well, folks… I live for these things. Like Liotta, Burt gets some howlers of dialogue like “Sorcery!” (You have to see it in the context of the scene. He just kind of blurts it out.) and “Wisdom is our hammer. Prudence is our nail!”
Ron Perlman also does some fine work as Statham’s grizzled sidekick. I don’t normally like to talk about people’s physical features, but this dude keeps getting uglier in every movie. I mean there’s one scene in the film where he dresses up like one of the rubber suited monster to infiltrate their ranks AND IT WORKS. Nobody looks twice. The other monsters are just like, “Oh it’s you Ugly Monster, go right ahead.” My advice for Ron for Hellboy 2: FORGET THE MAKE-UP. You’re scarier without it.
That’s not to say that all of ITNOTKADST is enjoyable. There are a bunch of interminable dialogue scenes that go nowhere or are haphazardly edited so you don’t know who the heck or what the fuck these Renaissance ninnies are talking about. There’s also a lot of superfluous baloney with the King’s magician (John Rhys-Davies) and his daughter (Leelee Sobieski) who must make amends for boning Liotta by helping to fight, that slow things down as well.
Matthew Lillard will also grate on your nerves as the sniveling, whiny, backstabbing nephew of the King. Basically, Lillard’s still playing Shaggy, except with less hair and an English accent. Further proof that the man is nothing without Freddie Prinze Jr. watching his back.
But my biggest gripe with the movie is that NOBODY seizes a dungeon in this movie. In the film’s two hour running time (which is about 40 minutes longer than any Uwe Boll movie has any right being) all we get about a three minute scene where Statham’s brother in law (the TNA Impact reject) leads an uprising of prisoners, but they don’t siege the dungeon, just escape it. (This scene also features a great moment when he turns to the smoking hot prisoner next to him and asks her, “So… where you from?”) Even though the movie features ZERO Dungeon Sieging, at least someone uses the phrase “In the name of the King” in a sentence.
Despite it’s many, many, many faults, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale offers enough enjoyment for your entertainment dollar (uh… well I used a gift card left over from Christmas so it cost me nothing). For all it’s shortcomings, it features a lot of hilarious and memorable images such as the screen’s first ESP swordfight (Liotta and Davies just stand there with their arms folded while the swords do all the work. Brilliant.), Renaissance festival style fairies that swing through the air like Vegas showgirls, Ray Liotta as a 14th century wizard who dresses like a 21st century pimp, and of course Burt Reynolds dressed like a samurai.
You got to hand it to Uwe Boll. The only man crazy enough to begin his movie with a scene of two people lying in bed saying, “I knew you’d come. I could feel it before you came” and they AREN’T talking about doing the bedtime bugaloo. Uwe Boll, the man whose ego is so big that he ends the film with the titles:
“An Uwe Boll Film”.
“Directed by Uwe Boll”.
That takes guts.
With an ego like this, the title, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is kinda eerie because the A is emphasized. If Boll gave us AAAA Dungeon Siege, he could quite possibly give us another.
Hey, he made Bloodrayne 2, anything’s possible.
Bloodrayne 2 has no such luxuries.
In fact, nobody returns from the original movie (with exception of Michael Pare from Eddie and the Cruisers, but he plays a different role), but unfazed by the lack of any big names, Boll still showed up for this one, which shows his dedication I guess.
This time, the half vampire chick Rayne (now played by Natassia Malthe from DOA) trades her 18th century Romanian castle out for a small town in the Wild West (!) where she matches wits with Billy the Kid (!!) who is actually a vampire (!!!) bent on hijacking a train to spread vampirism throughout the west. Okay, this premise has the makings for some hilarious B (well, Z) movie entertainment, but Boll totally botches anything that could’ve possibly made this worthwhile.
I’m still puzzled how a movie with such a potentially zany premise could turn into 100 minutes of cinematic constipation. Perhaps it’s because this film lacked the budget, the name stars, the action, the decency of a theatrical exhibition, the nudity, the atmosphere, the gore, and the cheesy appeal of the original. Or it could be because Boll’s direction just sucks rabid weasel nuts.
The performances match Boll’s ineptness to a tee. Natassia Malthe basically looks more like a coked out model in a Stetson hat than a sexy badass half-human vampire slayer. Unlike her predecessor Kristianna Loken, she seriously lacks any sign of screen charisma. What’s worse is that she doesn’t show ANY skin, which makes me seriously doubt her acting range, if you know what I mean. Everyone else in this dud is equally pathetic. All of the vampire cowboys are all indistinguishable from the next with the exception of Billy the Kid. We know he’s the leader because he’s the one with long scraggily blond hair.
The flick also happens to have ZERO action in it. Despite the occasional gunfight that may or may not wake you from your Boll induced coma, there is nothing here that remotely matches the first Bloodrayne’s battles. (God how pathetic can a movie be when I start waxing nostalgic about Bloodrayne?) What passes as action are a handful of badly choreographed shootouts (the bullets are dipped in holy water so it saves the trouble of stakes), but they are too few and far between to be much good. Rayne doesn’t even bust out her patented sword thing-a-ma-bobs until the final reel, which may give you an idea of what (not) to expect. You can tell Boll was trying to get all Matrixy with the slow-motion action sequences, but the REAL reason Boll shoots everything in slow-motion is this: The movie has so little action in it that if he didn’t slow everything down, there would be nothing to see.
But nothing hurts the movie more than the atmosphere (or more directly, the lack of it). I mean the set is obviously one of those hole-in-the-wall western theme parks made to look like an authentic “Wild West” town. Seriously, the western town in Cannibal: The Musical was more convincing than this mess. Honestly, I have heard of one-horse towns before, but I’ll be goddamned I never thought I’d see a one-horse movie. (No, literally there is only one horse in this movie, again apparently that’s all the budget could afford.)
The setting may have suffered from being inauthentic, but at least the special effects are time period appropriate. That is to say they look like they came out of the 19th century. I mean here we are in 2007 and people are still running around wearing unconvincing vampire fangs that look like they came out of a dime store.
You have to be a glutton for punishment if you think making (or watching) a sequel to Bloodrayne is a good idea, but really, Bloodrayne 2 has nothing going for it. No tits. No action. No idiotic artistry that made the original tolerable. (Although there is one hilarious shot of a vampire’s image in the mirror where all you can see is his coat being held up stiffly.) It makes the original look like The Wild Bunch in comparison.
You know how video games have “cheats” so you can skip right to the end? You’ll wish this movie had the same cheat.
Bloodrayne 2 gets my vote for Worst Film of the Year, Worst Direct-to-DVD Sequel and Worst Film Based on a Video Game, which has to be worth SOMETHING at least.
It’s no Mortal Kombat, but it sure kicks Street Fighter’s ass.
All the action sequences are edited into thousands of quick cuts to hide the fact that these women are eye candy and not action heroes, but you won’t care because there’s one great scene where a chick battles three dudes topless and is miraculously able to put her bra on in the midst of the fight. The tournament sequences even feature the opponent’s health meters and “KO!” graphics too, which makes this a fairly dead on depiction of the game.
What we got here is bar none, without a doubt the greatest kung-fu-fighting-chicks-movie-that-was-b
Besides, the ever sleazy Eric Roberts is in it as the sunglasses wearing villain who “steals” all the fighters’ powers, so what is there to hate?
I mean what did you expect from the director of The Transporter and the writer of Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death?
This time out she’s helping a caravan full of survivors through the desert while fending off hundreds of decaying zombies. Meanwhile in an underground facility, a sinister doctor is working on “domesticating” the zombies, which only leads into making them ten times more aggressive. While Alice is helping the convoy gather supplies in a sand swept Las Vegas (“the desert took it back”), the slimy doctor unleashes a horde of zombies on Alice and company which leaves many dead (and undead). After shooting lots of mutated aggressive zombies in the head, the leader of the caravan, Claire (Final Destination’s Ali Larter) takes the remaining nameless extras north to Alaska, while Alice heads down to the subterranean lair to settle the score once and for all. Because Alice’s powers from the second movie are “developing at a geometric rate”, by the end of the movie she can levitate shit with her mind like a Jedi Knight. She’ll need all the help she can get too, because by that time, the good doctor has mutated into the Fried Calamari Man; and he’s pissed.
Since this is a Resident Evil movie it is a virtual prerequisite that Mila must fight off a pack of hungry zombie dogs. This time the dogs have zero skin, which makes them twice as disgusting. Besides dogs we also get a flock of zombie crows, who in the movie’s best scene do their best impersonation of Hitchcock’s The Birds and peck the living shit out of token R&B artist Ashanti.
The scenes where the doctor tries in vain to domesticate the zombies is ripped off wholesale from Day of the Dead (the zombie even uses a phone just like Bub), but fortunately the plagiarism only lasts for a couple minutes. Resident Evil: Apocalypse co-stars Mike Epps and Oded Fehr return, but become zombie chow pretty quickly. Milla (whose make-up remains perfectly untouched throughout the apocalyptic sandstorms and zombie battles) looks great yet again, but sadly doesn’t get naked in this one. (Leave your modesty at home, girl!) Luckily the movie ends with Milla activating thousands of her clones, so hopefully if there’s a Resident Evil 4, one of them will get naked. (And if the prospect of a thousand naked Millas isn’t enough to give you a boner, nothing will.)
Russell Mulcahy, the man responsible for one of the greatest comic book movies of all time, The Shadow, directs the action with a lot of flair (the zombie battle in the ruins of Vegas are particularly well done), but the movie kinda runs out of steam by the time Milla squares off against the Fried Calamari Man. As a cheesy throwaway special effect, he’s okay, but as a Resident Evil “final boss”, he’s pretty weak. I guess after Nemesis from Apocalypse, anything would’ve been a let down. Like all the Resident Evil movies, this was written by Milla’s hubby, Paul W.S. (Event Horizon) Anderson.
It’s the worst film based on a video game ever.
It makes Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life look like Goldfinger. It makes Doom look like The Terminator. It makes Street Fighter look like Rocky. It makes Mortal Kombat: Annihilation look like Star Trek 2.
It’s sad too, because this movie came with a pedigree. It was written by Roger Avary who directed The Rules of Attraction and co-wrote Pulp Fiction, and was directed by Christophe Gans who directed the best 17th century man-made werewolf vs. kung fu Indian movie, Brotherhood of the Wolf.
Radha (Pitch Black) Mitchell stars as a mother whose sleepwalking daughter wakes up screaming “Silent Hill”, the name of an abandoned town. Mitchell thinks that by taking her daughter to Silent Hill it will hopefully cure her of her night terrors. Big mistake. Upon arrival, she immediately wrecks her car and loses her daughter and has to deal with CGI monsters whenever the town’s air raid warning sounds. She and a cop (Laurie Holden) try to unlock the mystery of Silent Hill, but unfortunately there’s too many gaps in logic (all the people of the town are obviously dead, but can get killed again) and the plot has more holes in it than Clyde Barrows’ body.
Gans sprinkles in some cool imagery (the triangle head dude with the oversized samurai sword) but most of the movie doesn’t make a lick of sense. The biggest problem is that the film’s individual scenes don’t lead anywhere or have any bearing on the next scene. (Mitchell is chased by a CGI monster from one room to another, only to be chased by… another CGI monster.) The climax does provide some gory goodness, the best being Alice (Star Trek: First Contact) Krige getting an impromptu barb wire hysterectomy. But one impromptu barb wire hysterectomy not a movie make.
Sean (Flightplan) Bean, Kim (Battlefield: Earth) Coates and an unrecognizable Deborah Kara (Crash) Unger co-star. The movie fails the ultimate video game movie test: you’ll rather be playing the game based on the movie than actually watching the movie.
Game Over.
In this direct to DVD sequel, the always fun Sid Haig shows up briefly as a college professor who turns a bimbo into a zombie, who of course bites him. This leads to a cool opening sequence involving undead sorority sisters and zombie cheerleaders. Then, “29 Days Later” (!) the plot begins. Emmanuelle (Saw 2) Vaugier (“I kill zombies for a living!”), Ed (Beeper) Quinn, and rapper Sticky (the Blade TV show) Fingaz are the soldiers sent to the college campus to find a “First Generation” specimen.
The annoying thing is that the mercs refer to the zombies as “Hyper-sapiens”.
The supposedly well trained marines are lousy shots and get bitten and turn into zombies pretty fast.
Some ludicrous dialogue (“Zombies don’t read, they need Hooked on Phonics!”) and a decent amount of gore and nudity make up for the lack of Uwe Boll’s entertaining ineptness. It’s not exactly a worthy successor to the original, but it does have its moments. It also will go down in history as the first film to feature a zombie mosquito. And I must say watching Fingaz trying to act like a zombie is pretty hilarious. The way they try to link the two movies is pretty ridiculous though. (Haig is supposed to be the main character from the first movie. What did he age like 30 years or something?) The scene in which Quinn covers himself in zombie blood in order to walk amongst the undead is pretty cool and actually makes more sense than the “pretend to be dead” method used in Shawn of the Dead. The unsatisfying ending features some of the worst CGI explosions and fire I’ve ever seen and clears the way for another sequel. There are also zombie chefs, a juicy arm chopping and some zombie football players.
Ellie Cornell returns from the first film playing a different character. Writer/producer Mark A. Altman also has a cameo. Director Mike Hurst also wrote Mansquito.
After House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark, the Uwe-Boll-directed-movie-based-on-a-video-g
Hottie Kristianna (Terminator 3) Loken stars as the smoking Rayne, a half human/half vampire chick that is hunted by the evil Kagen, played by Ben (Tuck Everlasting) Kingsley. (Memo to Ben: Fire your agent!) She wants revenge on Kagen because he killed her mother, so she teams up with a trio of vampire hunters (Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez and Matt Davis) to defeat him.
Boll offers up plenty of gore (severed heads, throat rippings, eye gougings, etc.) and a healthy dose of nudity, but unfortunately the action scenes are edited so haphazardly, it’s hard to tell what the hell is going on half the time. Of the cast, Billy Zane seems to be having the most fun as he gleefully hams it up. Loken, who can stand around and look hot like it’s nobody’s business, is pretty good in the lead and has an energetic fuck scene with
Guinevere (American Psycho) Turner wrote the screenplay. Madsen and Kingsley (who have one awkward scene together) were also in Species together. Boll’s next is yet another movie based on a video game (!), Dungeon Siege.
Uwe Boll returns to direct another movie based on a video game, but unlike his camp classic House of the Dead, it isn’t campy and it ain’t no classic. Christian Slater stars as a paranormal investigator looking for children who disappeared from a mysterious orphanage. Stephen Dorff, who must have overdosed on Nyquil before filming, co-stars and his 5 o’clock shadow challenges Slater’s to a fight. The barely there Tara Reid also shows up as do some tentacled monsters.
The doubt your sanity highlight is the scene where a seemingly indestructible man attacks Slater on a dock. Slater shoots him, but the bullet has no effect. What does Slater do next? He shoots him again! What does Boll do? He cranks up the soundtrack, throws in some insane camerawork of the bullet being loaded into the chamber and adds a POV shot of the bullet being fired in slow motion and going straight into the dude. You would think all of that cinematic hyperbole would signal the death of the guy, or at least mortally wound him, right? WRONG! It has the same effect as the first bullet which is to say NONE! I can understand using all that fancy camerawork and CGI on the first bullet, but why in God’s name would you use it on the second bullet? Especially when it’s just as ineffective as the first! As a cherry on top, the “indestructible” man is later killed when he lands on a pole! WHAT THE FUCK?
Only Uwe Boll knows for sure.
He did yet another video game adaptation, Bloodrayne next.
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