03/05/06 Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet (2006), directed by Kurt Wimmer

watched w/ Leslie & Jason; theater (Town & Country Cinema, Aberdeen, NC)

Let me just start by saying that director Kurt Wimmer's last film "Equilibrium" was amazing. It was a dark undertaking of a futuristic world where emotions are regulated by law, and people are either subjected to a life-altering drug or eliminated. Similarly in subject matter, Ultraviolet portrays a futuristic world where a blood-borne disease has infected the population, giving carriers superhuman abilities. However, the government (lead by the evil Daxus) tries to eliminate these Hemophages (lead by the rogue warrior Violet) before she can save her kind from extinction. Violet has the uncanny ability to not only change her hair or wardrobe color at the inkling of an emotional change, but has the coolest gloves that will produce any weapon she sees fit to kick butt against the bad guys, out of thin air. While playing to the comic book favorites of superhuman strengths, grotesque mutations of life, apocalyptic warfare, and over-the-top fight scenes; this film however falls flat on developing its plot (or covering up plot-holes for that matter). Wimmer used clever characters and dark socio-political dialogues in "Equilibrium" to convey the situation that the movie is involved. Here, most of the guesswork on what exactly a Hemophage is, or how exactly this world evolved, up to the viewer. Plus, the creepy maternal/sexual relationship that Violet has with the child lab-rat she rescues is unsettling. Milla Jovovich (playing Violet) is used simply as she was as the heroine in "The Fifth Element," except here she shouldn't have had much speaking parts either. Just let her kick butt.

3 out of 5 stars