Film Reviews

Ultra Violet

• Rating:
• Director: Kurt Wimmer.
• Starring: Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright, Nick Chinlund, William Fichtner.
• Details: US, 88mins, 15A.

It's the late 21st century and the world is on the brink of civil war between humans and hemophages - a vampire subculture that was once human but was contaminated by a genetically modifying disease giving them increased physical and mental abilities. In this melee is a young hemophage woman - Ultraviolet (Jovovich) - who finds herself protecting a nine-year-old boy (Bright) who is the ultimate weapon in the human's attempt to wipe out the hemophages. We're in Aeon Flux territory here - sexy female freedom fighter kicks ass in a futuristic world where she is pursued from one fight scene to the next; but Kurt Wimmer's Ultraviolet only wishes it has half the heart and intelligence that Flux has. Watching the opening credits meshed with the pages of a comic book, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the director has to do the best with the material available which, bar a few exceptions, is always poor - comic books. However, Ultraviolet is not a comic book adaptation - it's just a badly written, poorly acted piece of dung that hopes that The Matrix fans will be still interested in seeing. But that day has long passed. The performances are as bad as it can get; the CGI looks so lifeless and plastic, they wouldn't be accepted at a Tupperware party because of a lack of imagination while the dialogue is English but not as we know it: "Which one of those bullets zipping past your head didn't you get?"

Review by Gavin Burke