Ultraviolet (2006)
Directed by Kurt Wimmer
In the late 21st century, a subculture of humans have emerged who have been modified genetically by a vampire-like disease, giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence. As they are set apart from "normal" and "healthy" humans, the world is pushed to the brink of worldwide civil war aimed at the destruction of the "diseased" population. In the middle of this crossed-fire is - an infected woman - Ultraviolet, who finds herself protecting a nine-year-old boy who has been marked for death by the human government as he is believed to be a threat to humans.
2 connections found
View:
2 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Ultraviolet to
You will not understand it only if you have not already encountered the not dissimilar cyberpunk futureworlds of Blade Runner, The Matrix and Aeon Flux, not to mention Jovovich's own The Fifth Element and Resident Evil - and if you have not, you are probably in the wrong target demographic for this film anyway.
But Wimmer kills off most of the interest by having no clue how to develop the theme, as evidenced in the film's opening narration when Ultaviolet (Milla Jovovich, Resident Evil) informs us, "I was born into a world you might not understand," a statement completely at odds with the movie's allegorical underpinnings.
Even “Resident Evil” took the time to develop the main character during the first half of the movie, so why does Wimmer sum up Violet’s entire back story with an opening voiceover that feels like it came from a previous film?
Milla Jovovich, whose played this same damn character in “The Fifth Element”, “Resident Evil”, and “Resident Evil: Apocalypse” (and seems to want to continue doing so) really should get a new agent.
As she's shown in the "Resident Evil" series, the former supermodel is game for just about anything.
But "Ultraviolet," hard as it may be to believe, has even less going for it than "Resident Evil: Apocalypse," that 2004 turkey in which Milla butt kicked her way through a lame sequel to 2002's "Resident Evil," in which Milla butt kicked her way through a tired treatise featuring secret experiments, deadly viruses, and fatal mistakes.
Kurt Wimmer's breakthrough feature Equilibrium (2002) was already an unabashed rip-off of The Matrix as filtered through concepts borrowed from the dystopian novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Farenheit 451, but it had enough good ideas and fine performances to stand up on its own.
In both this and Equilibrium, Wimmer suffers almost from a surplus of ideas - too much for just one movie, at any rate.
When writer/director Kurt Wimmer released the sci-fi thriller “ Equilibrium ” in 2002, I argued against numerous criticisms that the film was a clone of the original “ Matrix .”
Director Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) coats everything in a retouched, digital sheen making characters look less human.
As opposed to his cult hit Equilibrium, writer-director Kurt Wimmer doesn’t seem interested in telling an actual story here, but in creating a kinetic art piece of color, sound, and movement that exists somewhere between the Underworld movies and Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle, with just a hint of Tron thrown in.