Movie Review: ULTRAVIOLET

As an enormous fan of Kurt Wimmer’s great libertarian film Equilibrium, I can’t deny my overall disappointment with his latest, Ultraviolet, which opened this weekend. Wimmer’s taken the premise of John Cassavetes’ 1980 mobster movie Gloria and turned it into a high-velocity sci-fi/action videogame of a film. In fact, the movie’s CGI is so bright and colorful that it never looks real; it looks like a videogame throughout. But maybe that was Wimmer’s intention. Ultraviolet is fun to watch, never dull, and it amps up the gunplay, swordplay, and martial arts of Equilibrium more than 100%. But it’s largely empty plotwise and filled with a lot of vampire nonsense that serves little purpose and lessens any freedom-tinged messages it might otherwise offer.

On the other hand, Ultraviolet is the latest movie to represent a trend I find irresistible: the armed and dangerous babe. Yeah, I like Ultraviolet in the same way I liked the superior Elektra and Aeon Flux. In this case, the babe is the delicious Milla Jovovich, and almost every scene lingers lovingly on her face, midriff, or ass before she mows down literally thousands of bad guys. And I can’t find too much fault in that. So sue me.

Ultraviolet is a “renter.” But don’t let me stop you from seeing it on the big screen before it hits DVD shelves in, oh, the next four to six weeks.