Ultraviolet hits the ground running with an elaborate action sequence involving a precious package and a determined courier — "When it absolutely has to get there on time… no matter how many people you have to kill!" — could be the slogan.
You could also add "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," to the jargon, if you want to include star Milla Jovovich's other sideline. Those two thoughts actually sum up the first 10-15 minutes of this futuristic quasi-vampire flick. Between running with a hot package, riding a motorcycle through the opening of a flying helicopter, and kicking major Eurotrash butt, Milla's hair color, eye makeup, lipstick and outfits change color more often than a chameleon on acid.
The futuristic Ultraviolet is packed with eye candy. But is it sweet, or just empty calories? Had the movie actually stuck with the action and not veered into soulless sentimentality, I would probably have given it a decent review. I enjoyed writer-director Kurt Wimmer's previous actioner, Equilibrium, quite a bit and there are a lot of elements from that in this. But unfortunately, the characters had to open their mouths. That's when Ultraviolet becomes ultra vapid.
The story, sort of a Tron-meets-Matrix-meets-Underworld-meets-Gloria, follows Violet (Jovovich), a mutated human who's evolved into a powerful killing machine with one weakness: Bad scripts. But I digress. Hemophages are sort of like vampires; the blood-infected enhanced humans have pointy fangs and are tougher than a Timex on steroids. This is a threat to the government, who become hellbent on containing and destroying these deadly creatures. The regime comes up with a time bomb that will effectively eliminate all Hemophages and to Violet's surprise, the deadly device is actually a nine-year-old boy who was raised in a laboratory and goes by the name Six (Cameron Bright).
Cameron Bright is certainly one of the most talented child actors to come along in quite some time, but he must choose his projects on pulchritude alone (in Godsend, he was mothered by Rebecca Romijn Stamos; in Birth he took a bath with Nicole Kidman; and now he's absorbing the bodily fluids of Milla Jovovich. Nice work if you can get it, I guess). But even Bright can't save this futuristic flub-fest.
When Violet wants to become Six's mama, things go from worse, to well, worse. Unfortunately, it looks like women haven't come a long way, baby, when it comes to action flicks. Reference Elektra, Catwoman, Aeon Flux, or Bloodrayne; perhaps the problem is the cheesecake factor. There were almost as many close-ups of Jovovich's cheeks than there were of her face. In fact, if they'd shown her butt one more time, I would have felt cheated if she didn't start talking out of it, perhaps singing "O, assholo-mio" (ala Jim Carrey). Still, she does look runway perfect (except for the strange gray tint to her teeth; all of the actors suffered this malady and I couldn't help but wonder if everyone was hooked on tooth-whitening, or if the DP simply did not light them properly).
I will say that the hyper-real look of the Ultraviolet world is first class. The CGI, the surreal cityscape with its cotton candy colors and heightened peaks and valleys, the skintight, shiny costumes, speedy machines and lethal weapons — they were all super cool.
When it comes to these martial arts opuses, most audiences want to see more story and less action; but in this case, the movie needed less of the former and more of the latter.
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson