Kurt Wimmer impressed me with his sci-fi action drama EQUILIBRIUM in 2003. Dimension botched the promotion on the film
and it found it's audience on DVD. Now fast forward to his next movie, ULTRAVIOLET. The first thing that comes to mind after
watching it is the movie shows Kurt's love for Milla Jovovich. Despite the bad test screenings and the bad dialogue, ULTRAVIOLET
succeeds on some levels while failing on others. The action sequence that is at the start of the film feels too long while
it looks like more editing to tighten it up could have been done. The Hemophages who are nearly extinct thanks to the religious
medical establishment controlled by an arrogant evil Mormon named Archminister Daxus (Nick Chinlund), but I really don't give
two hoots about any of them except for Violet (Milla Jovovich) and Garth (William Fichtner) who is in love with her (except
it isn't very obvious since many character scenes did end up on the cutting room floor). Violet was infected when she learned
she was pregnant and she is dying. As a Hemophage, she decides to fight back against the evil medical system and her cargo
is a ten year olf kid, Six (Cameron Bright). The Hemophages want to destroy him because Six carries a gene that will kill
all of the Hemophages, but Violet can't bring herself to let them kill Six and she searches for a way to save the kid because
Six will die in nine hours. The more twisted thing is that Six is the clone of Daxus.
ULTRAVIOLET does have some enjoyable acting from Milla and the guy who plays Daxus (the actor is definitely hamming it
up). The music is great and ULTRAVIOLET paints a terrifying future and the main character has all types of weapons while
knowing how to really kick butt like an unstoppable killing machine. The only great action scenes come in the last thirty
minutes. The action scenes in the movies are brilliantly staged and worked out, but the editing is the enemy to those
scenes. You see Kurt should have edited the action down a little and left some of the character scenes in. Then I did hear
the rumors Kurt was fired from the film and Screen Gems decided to re-edit the film. I don't know if it is true, but it could
explain why ULTRAVIOLET has so much potential and yet falls short to fleshing out the stories and characters (which Equilibrium
did good enough).
I wait for a director's cut to come to DVD because ULTRAVIOLET doesn't feel like a finished film and the soft focus look
did annoy me ((it make the film seem unreal for the most of the 88 minute runtime). ULTRAVIOLET is an empty shell in it's
current form. The film has lost several character scenes since the test screenings last year and that version was two hours
long. So if your idea of a good time is to look at Milla kick butt in a live action video game with an evil Mormon medical
administrator bad guy, ULTRAVIOLET is your kind of flick.
Rough Cut Vs. Studio Cut thread:
http://equilibrium.proboards17.com/index.cgi?board=Wimmer&action=display&thread=1141459599
this review is (c)3-7-2006 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission (except for excerpts and a link to
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