UltraViolet,\ Kurt Wimmer's newest attempt to cause widespread Attention Deficit Disorder among moviegoers, is another mediocre addition to the sci-fi/action genre. It displays all the common pillars of this group—the computer graphics, the endless sea of weaponry, the heavily choreographed fight scenes and the violent female character—and manages to use them in extreme excess. The movie is a collage of every fight scene that has ever burdened the silver screen, tied together by a story that has something to do with rebellion against an authoritarian future government. Basically, it is another film that will appear to be a film you have seen before. Except, this time the film has no redeeming qualities. It is just a bad movie.
""UltraViolet"" follows Violet (Milla Jovovich), a scantily clad woman modified by a virus—engineered by the government, of course—that turns humans into fierce warriors on a vengeful rampage. She ends up stealing what she thinks is a weapon designed to kill everyone infected with the virus from the evil government headed by Vice Cardinal Daxus (Nick Chinlund). The weapon ends up being a young boy, Six (Cameron Bright), who possibly holds a cure for the virus in Violet's system. Violet, who lost a child when she was infected with the virus, is driven to hack, slash and shoot through a series of repetitive one-sided battles to preserve the cure and the boy's existence.
This film, which opens with misleading flashes of comic book-inspired images (""UltraViolet"" has no basis in comics), quickly spirals into a series of inane and incoherent fight scenes. Violet walks through these fights with an endless stream of carnage-dealing weaponry that she summons from thin air. At one point, she utilizes a horribly unrealistic automatic pistol with a sword attached to the butt, to cut down and shoot her enemies at the same time. She easily mows through the infinite number of military drones aided by acrobatic moves that are reminiscent of the many faux-martial arts techniques that are common in films like this. She is aided by her belt, which, in the most serious sense, allows her to defy gravity. This technique is even used in a vehicle chase scene; Violet hits a switch and she is soon magically riding her motorcycle on the sides of cars and buildings alike.
These scenes are frenzied, busy and rely heavily on low-quality effects. The visuals in these scenes show so little detail that it is hard to tell what you are seeing on the screen—it is as if Wimmer wanted to cover up the poor quality of the film by making it impossible for a viewer to process the action.
When ""UltraViolet"" is not hurting moviegoers' eyes with seizure-inducing battle scenes, it is destroying the English language with terrible dialogue. For example, when Violet is not killing she is often visiting Garth (William Fichtner), another virus sufferer who provides Violet with medical treatment, more guns and sappy lines to respond to. Beyond their forced romantic mini-plot, bad dialogue plagues Violet's near-constant fights. Daxus speaks the worst of these before the final fight between he and Violet when he says, ""It is on.""
Violet explains that she was ""born into a world you may not understand"" at the opening and the closing of the film. Poor Violet, the viewers understand your world. It is simple. What the viewers do not understand is why this film was made.
\
