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 or
those of you not already familiar with director
Uwe Boll, let me bring you up to date: Boll is a
German doctor of literature, who, ever since
2003's "House
of the Dead" has made a name for himself
by buying the rights to videogames, bastardising
their plots, concepts and characters for the
screen, hiring the cheapest screenwriters he can
find to pen the scripts, then churning out
terrible films. All his videogame-to-movie
transfers have been funded by a string of
investors (and occasionally Boll himself) and
released under his German production company Boll
KG as, in
Germany
, a bizarre loophole in the law awards tax
exemption to films that perform poorly at the box
office.
Thankfully, in January of
this year, the German government closed up this
loophole, and disgruntled film fans like myself
rejoiced at the thought of Dr Boll being brought
to a stop. Unfortunately, he has now made such a
name for himself (by basically sucking the life
out of every videogame he touches) that his films
always break even, largely due to people like
myself buying or renting his movies out of morbid
curiosity. And with four videogame adaptations
lined up for the near future, Boll shows no sign
of relenting, leaving the tarnished names of
ruined game franchises in his wake.
Boll's frankly astonishing
lack of creativity is as present as ever in his
latest game-to-movie feature
"BloodRayne". Betraying the plotline of
the original game, the movie is set in the
mid-1700s (the original game being set in the
1930s) and sees Rayne (Kristanna Loken, "T3"),
a half-vampire, half-human team up with vampire
hunters Vladimir (Michael Madsen), Sebastian
(Matthew Davis) and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez)
to kill the Emperor of Romania/her father Kagan
(Ben Kinsley) for some reason.
If you thought the plot
structure of Boll's "Alone in the Dark"
was a mess, "BloodRayne" is worse,
boasting countless superfluous subplots and
spontaneous twists that were probably intended to
make the film appear deep, but just ended up
confusing everything, to the point where you can't
make heads nor tails of the movie. Not that it's a
particularly complex film, but a bad script
(penned, surprisingly, by Guinevere Turner, writer
of "American Psycho") coupled with Dr
Boll's complete lack of competence in handling the
subject matter eradicates anything remotely
resembling a storyline, putting all the focus on
the action.
This could be forgivable if
"BloodRayne" actually contained some
decent action. Kristanna Loken's sword fighting is
so cumbersome that she looks like her legs have
been welded to the floor. I almost feel sorry for
the trained martial artists that have to lose to
her on film, but there's only so much pity one can
have for people who agrees to be in a Uwe Boll
film. "BloodRayne's" appalling
"grand finale" action sequence -- where
the vampire hunters do battle with Kagan and his
men -- is a complete mess, with about five
individual fights all happening at once. When
Michael Madsen and Ben Kingsley take up arms
against each other, it doesn't look impressive or
cool; it just looks like two aging men swinging
around fake plastic weaponry.
Despite this,
"BloodRayne" does have some good points.
Unlike Boll's previous films,
"BloodRayne" almost manages to fit into
the "so bad it's hilarious" category.
"House of the Dead" and "Alone in
the Dark" were in fact better described as
"so bad it's just really bad", but
"BloodRayne" managed to get a smile and
even a few laughs from me. This is largely due to
the addition of good actors to the cast: Ben
Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Billy Zane and Meat
Loaf. These men saunter through the film, chewing
the scenery with a wry smile, practically saying
to the audience, "This is a terrible film,
and we're only in it for the money". Had the
rest of the cast adopted this attitude,
"BloodRayne" could have worked out
brilliantly as a comedy, but Kristanna Loken,
Matthew Davis and Michelle Rodriguez take the film
almost as seriously as Boll does, thus ruining the
effect.
To sum it up:
"BloodRayne" is a terrible (if somewhat
unintentionally funny) film. It's better than Uwe
Boll's previous ventures, but still bad enough to
convince the world that Dr Boll could not properly
direct a stream of urine into the vague area of a
toilet bowl, let alone a multi-million dollar
movie. Yet, no matter how many negative reviews he
gets or how poorly his films perform at the box
office, he just blames these problems on biased
reviewers and dumb audiences. Furthermore, he is
taking time off from filming his next film
"Postal" to fight a handful of his
toughest critics in a 10-round boxing match.
You can beat up as many
people as you want, Uwe, it won't change the fact
that your films suck.
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