Rarely have I gotten the kind of hate mail that I received a year ago when I gave a semi-positive review to Uwe Boll’s BLOODRAYNE. Anonymous posters attacked me personally and went after my family and regular website commenters in an almost deranged fashion, merely because I had deigned to write something less-than-hateful about Boll, who inspires a visceral disgust in cinephiles that could almost be equated to the reaction George Bush evokes in liberals. And it’s not exactly unfair, either – HOUSE OF THE DEAD, which may be the only movie to intersplice video-game footage into live-action fight sequences, is easily one of the worst major motion pictures ever produced; and ALONE IN THE DARK is the only movie I can think of that has the audience in stitches (unintentionally) before a single frame of footage rolls, merely because of its 12-paragraph opening text crawl that goes on forever and makes no sense at all.
Yet both those movies were ultimately bad in a boring way. BLOODRAYNE, unlike its predecessors, had decent production values, and better cinematography and editing than previous Boll films. When it was bad, it was gloriously so – Meat Loaf as a decadent vampire mobster, Michael Madsen sporting the mullet from hell, Michelle Rodriguez doing valiant battle with an English accent and failing, Billy Zane seemingly in a completely separate movie...oh, and Kristanna Loken’s breasts were very nice too.
Now January has rolled around again, and with it another Uwe Boll movie based only slightly on a video game, the cumbersomely named IN THE NAME OF THE KING: A DUNGEON SIEGE TALE. The king in question is Burt Reynolds, which likely tells you all you need to know. Or not...you might also appreciate the fact that Ray Liotta plays an evil sorcerer, and that Jason Statham is the last hope for the kingdom, as a humble farmer named...Farmer. Who just happens to be the only person in the kingdom armed with a boomerang.
You know this can’t be as “good” as BLOODRAYNE because it’s PG-13. But it does have an amazing cast – Boll’s rather foolproof technique is to do all his casting at the very last minute, catching name actors between projects before they have a chance to think about things too much. So here, with a hodgepodge of accents, we also have Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, Leelee Sobieski, Kristanna Loken again, and Matthew Lillard, who appears to have been blind drunk for the entire shoot.
The plot, such as it is, involves a bunch of low-rent Orc rip-offs called the Krug, powered by the magic of evil magus Gallian (Liotta). Magi are supposed to lose all their power if they stop serving a king, but Gallian has found a brilliant technical loophole by simply declaring himself king of the Krug. Meanwhile, the actual king’s nephew, Duke Fallow (Lillard) is trying to usurp the throne, which doesn’t sit to well when it turns out that Farmer, as the result of a series of plot developments that all took place offscreen, is actually the rightful heir. Also, Leelee Sobieski plays a tomboyish chick who was momentarily tempted by the sexy charms of Ray Liotta (arguably the hardest thing to believe in a movie about wizards and monsters), and now wants to be a knight – her uncle is John Rhys-Davies, whose presence is clearly supposed to make you think, “Hey, this must be an okay Lord of the Rings rip-off if Gimli’s in it.” Here, he’s a mage, who doesn’t do much except pontificate and die. Oops, spoiler.
Though Boll now has his own fan base who love his awfulness – the crowd I saw the movie with cheered when his name came up onscreen at the end – he isn’t consistent enough for my liking/disliking. There are moments in the movie that honestly border on the artful, and could have gotten there in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. And then there are parts like when Loken shows up as the leader of a bunch of vine-swinging Cirque du Soleil tree-dwelling lesbians who vehemently profess neutrality for about five minutes, or when Ray Liotta decides he can take out Jason Statham by levitating a bunch of books and spinning them around real fast. Now that’s funny. But this movie is over two hours long.
Oh, and the part where Lillard invokes “Imperial Law,” despite the fact that this is clearly a monarchy, and not an empire.
Best lines of the movie:
“Give me the chicken! Ar ar ar!” – Ron Perlman.
“I only know what you tell me, and you tell me nothing” – Claire Forlani.
“Men – not only useless, but helpless as well.” – recently un-closeted lesbian Kristanna Loken.
“Wisdom is our hammer, prudence will be our nail.” – Burt Reynolds, as part of the best slow-mo extended death scene ever.
“I sense him...IN YOU!” – Ray Liotta, to Forlani.
For the love of God, don’t walk out of the movie – the songs on the end credits are the funniest goddamn thing ever, by a band named Blind Guardian whose sound can best be described as what might happen if a really horrible ‘80s German metal band were stripped of their instruments and forced to play at a Renn Faire. Unreal.
As for the movie itself...it’s no BLOODRAYNE.
January 11, 2008 14:27
I haven't seen the movie yet, and I don't plan to. However, at the end of this article I noticed the reviewer making negative comments about a band that is probably one of the most underated bands in the entire world. Blind Guardian is an extremely talented group, and are critically acclaimed far and wide throughout Europe. The writer of this article may be cinematically knowledgeable, but his complete ignorance of this band's reputation shows that he is certainly not a music critic. But yes, if you must see this apparently terrible movie, stay for the end, because you will be hearing some of the most amazing and epic music in existence.
January 11, 2008 15:16
You may have just become my favorite movie reviewer. I have to go rent bloodrayne now... I just hope its as awefully bad-good as you say, I'd hate to be dissapointed by a hint of intelligence.
January 11, 2008 16:24
I'm not a complete music geek, but fairly well versed in the European music scene and a metal head and I have NEVER heard of these guys. Amazon appears to have them in the "Indie/Metal" catagory. How in the hell could you expect a movie reviewer in ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA to know anything about some European Indie Metal band? So they are underrated, so is Tatu, but I don't expect people to have heard of them, much less like them.
Also, they seem to be the king of the geek bands. Like, really, really, geeky. Even for me. And I DM D&D every Saturday.
January 11, 2008 21:18
I just got home from seeing this epic disaster of a film, and I have to agree that the reviewer's comments are right on target. Even -- perhaps especially -- the bit about the music. I've never heard of the band either, but if word gets out that they were on this soundtrack, their reputation will be irreparably damaged.
Actually, this movie is entertaining as hell if you add your own Snatch or Monty Python dialog. ("Well, you have to know these things when you're a king, you know.") Much more fun than BloodRayne, though unintentionally so.
January 12, 2008 08:53
In the famous words of Billy Madison, "We are all now dumber" for having sat through such a horrendous movie. This critic was right on. All of my friends left the movie early.
January 13, 2008 07:22
you say another bad word abut blind guardian and I will hunt you down
January 18, 2008 02:25
Does anyone really have to see this movie to know it's a piece of shit?