Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet is a sci-fi
ninja film staring Mila Jonovich as a sci-fi
ninja. Mila comes to this project
straight off her decade-long acting streak playing sci-fi ninjas, now returning
to the genre that made her famous, has kept her famous, and for which she will
some day have been famous. I’m pretty
sure that Mila Jonovich gets up and skims through
scripts for Resident Evil sequels like an alcoholic looks at their first
drink of the day, with a bitter sense of satisfying dependency.
But I’ve got to hand it to her, she plays these roles
straight. The poses she strikes, the
faces she makes, she’s playing this role with respect. In a world devastated by irony, Mila’s acting
cheeks remain defiantly tongueless. If you take the time to watch this DVD with
Mila Jonovich’s commentary track I think you’ll
appreciate how it’s mostly just Mila making sound effects with her mouth and
doing impressions of Bruce Lee’s noises such as “Wahhhhhh!”
and “Hyooohhhhhh!”.
Mila also mentions how a scene where she’s driving a jet motorcycle up
the side of an exploding building would’ve been really hard and dangerous to do
without the aid of computer animation.
Thanks, Mila.
Mila plays Ultraviolet, a sci-fi ninja vampire who
lives in a future where vampires are persecuted by a fascist state. The opening narration tells us that vampires
were at first forced to wear identifying armbands and later all sent to death
camps. I would’ve found the obviousness
of parallels to the Nazis an insult to my intelligence, but V For Vendetta: The Stupid Movie Based On the Smart Book
actually managed to be more blatant and less imaginative with its
parallels. So Ultraviolet gets no
points for unoriginality in terms of futuristic history lessons. Sorry guys, you’ll just have to aim lower
next time.
The people in this futuristic world must have traded
in their history books for glass, because this film takes place in a world
where the glass supply is endless. I
guess that’s one of the cutting satirical points of this film, it’s not afraid
to address how mankind is willing to sacrifice its rights to dictatorships in
exchange for floor to ceiling windows. Sort of the “cage with gold bars” type of thing. All the buildings feature huge atriums and
endless anti-chambers all with funky glass sculptures and huge windows.
They even have so much glass that they make their
soldiers out of glass. The soldiers in
this movie are all robots with glass bodies, so that when they shatter it looks
all cool and shiny as their pieces hit the ground. The robots also aren’t the best
fighters. Even though they are large in
numbers they frequently form a circle around Ultraviolet and attack her one by
one. There’s actually a really good
scene in the opening action sequence where Ultraviolet is beating up on soldier
in the middle of a room and you can see the other two jogging around in circles
around them. I would’ve laughed more if
they’d been playing hacky sack, but a little cardio
will probably help them warm up their glass robot muscles for when it’s their
turn to get kicked in half.
If they robots are shooting with pistols and
Ultraviolet runs out of bullets they throw down their weapons and
fistfight. They seem to be programmed
based on Steven Segal films to act like the guys who got their asses kicked by
Steven Segal. It’s comforting to see the
trends established in his films have survived well into a glass-rich future. Maybe the robot that was programmed to act
like Segal himself was too expensive.
I’m pretty sure the fascist government did what governments always do
and went with the lowest bidder when ordering these soldiers. Or maybe it was an environmental thing
because the glass can be easily recycled.
But the government in this film doesn’t seem that ethical, ya know…..cuz they kill innocent
people ‘n stuff?
Aside from the windows, the architecture in this film
is very unique. It seems that sometime
in the future there was a wave of claustrophobic architects that all graduated
at the same time because every room is huge and contains only one thing,
usually some kind of altar. I’m guessing
in the future people revolted against cubicles and everything just started
going the other way and eventually reached the point where everybody’s office
is one desk in the middle of a room the size of a cathedral.
I would’ve liked to have seen the revolt against the
cubicles. I can see our offices just
becoming telephone booths with a computers welded to
the ceiling and we will all have to type standing up with our arms over our
heads. And then eventually businesses
will just dig a crater and fill it with laptops and force us to pile on top of
each other and work that way. Then some
revolutionary leads us all in the quest for personal space. Maybe they’ll do that in the prequel to Ultraviolet,
Mila Jonovich could play her character’s grandmother
and they could call her InfaRed
or something. I’d see it.
This film also depicts a future where lighting schemes
are valued above all else. All of these
giant rooms containing one object are dramatically lit. They leave no lighting scheme unused in this
film. You’ve got black lighting, gels of
every color, dramatic spotlights, strobe, lava lamps etc. This is either an homage
to Dario Argento or an insult, I’m not sure
which. Even the endless corridors that
connect all the giant rooms together have their own unique crazy lighting
schemes. I guess all these light schemes
are courtesy of the abundant glass which is used in making the bulbs.
This whole movie revolves around Ultraviolet
fighting the Ministry of Health that persecutes vampires. It is led by a minister named Daxus, who marches with his own personal praetorian of
several hundred of the glass robot soldiers.
I don’t really see what help they would be as bodyguards since he
marches in front of them. But even if he
had them surround him they wouldn’t be able to protect him from any attacks
since bullets would go right through their glass bodies. But that would make for even more shots of
glass shattering in slow motion, which is this film’s central theme.
These robots aren’t even very good for counter
attacks. They can’t shoot for shit. There’s a part where Ultraviolet’s car is
surround by a couple hundred of these guys standing around it in a semi circle
shooting from an elevated position a mere twenty feet away and still most of
them miss, and the car was parked.
The film starts off seeming like it’s one of those
movies about a prophecy and a messiah ‘n shit like that. There’s this kid that Ultraviolet needs to
rescue because her vampires friends think he’s the chosen one who’ll end the
war or some typical bullshit. But
halfway through the movie they totally abandon this plotline. I’m guessing the film was rewritten while filming
after they saw what kid got cast in this role.
This ugly little boy looks like Clint Howard, who we all know is
nobody’s saviour. So they throw away all
the prophecy stuff and go for a more obvious solution to the human-vampire war:
kicking the bad guy’s ass until he dies.
I liked that. I
think it’s a good message for kids.
Don’t count on messiahs and prophecies to solve your problems, just go
out there and kill the assholes causing them.
That’s a way better message than most movies that just tell kids to love
themselves for being fat or whatever. In
fact, I would recommend that Ultraviolet be added to the education
curriculum, especially in any college programs that instruct glass blowers.
Ultraviolet has to go to the Ministry of Health
Headquarters to kill the minister, Daxus. I mentioned earlier that the glass robots who protect Daxus had been
programmed to fight like the guys who get their asses served by Steven
Segal. Well, there’s more. Their overall battle strategy is based on old
video games such as Super Mario Bros and Double Dragon. Small, manageable groups are staggered at
even intervals throughout a long series of dramatically lit corridors. I’m not sure what these guys do when
Ultraviolet isn’t attacking. Their lives
must be pretty boring. They probably
just stand around talking about how the bad guys in Super Mario Bros were
unbeatable because they had strength in numbers and wisely didn’t blow out
their load by geographically concentrating their attack.
Other than the robots, there are other ninja type
people Ultraviolet must fight as she battles through the Ministry. I guess the assumption is that these are the
scientists who do the health research and they’re pissed because Ultraviolet
interrupted their work. But I never saw
any desks, paper, or science equipment.
I guess in the future people just go work and think and upload their
thoughts to the manager through wireless connection at the end of the day.
After battling through hundreds of ninja robots with uzis in countless dramatically lit corridors, Ultraviolet
faces the Minister’s most deadly guardians, a couple regular sized guys in
vision-inhibiting gas masks fighting in a regular sized corridor lit with
overhead white florescent lighting reminiscent of our times. These master guardians have a special
fighting style that is made of different types of hugs that they try to bust on
Ultraviolet. Only a true warrior who has
trained and mastered the skills taught in any two hour women’s self-defence
class could wriggle free from their hugs of doom. I’m telling you, if Tupac
had had a couple of these guys guarding him he’d still be rapping today.
When she gets to Daxus’s
layer, he flaunts his decadence with a room that looks like the Epcot
centre. Even in a future with such
abundant a supply of glass and need for space, this would surely still be
considered ostentatious. Daxus demonstrates a little remote he has that operates the
blinds on his giant glass room. In a
future that values lighting schemes above all else, there is no question as to
why this man is king.
He closes the blinds and pulls out his sword and
reveals that he is a master samurai. I
have no idea when this guy finds time to write public health policy. His sword bursts into flames and as he fights
Ultraviolet and when he becomes angrier it burns hotter, creating more lighting
effects for us audience members to enjoy.
Daxus reveals that he
is also a vampire, and used his vampire powers to rise through the bureaucracy
and become a master samurai and use the system to persecute his own kind. I love plot developments that happen right at
the end of a movie, add nothing, and don’t make any sense. They’re like the mint on the pillow of a
film.
I won’t tell you who wins in the final swordfight between
Ultraviolet and Daxus, I’ll let you rent this
masterpiece and find out for yourself. I
think you can tell from reading this that you’ll be in for quite a treat. I loved this movie and look forward to any
sequel they want to put out. It can’t
come straight to video fast enough.
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