Cyberpunk Review » Ultraviolet

Year: 2006

Directed by: Kurt Wimmer

Written by: Kurt Wimmer

IMDB Reference

Degree of Cyberpunk Visuals: High

Correlation to Cyberpunk Themes: Low

Key Cast Members:

Violet: Milla Jovovich
Six: Cameron Bright
Garth: William Fichtner
Daxus: Nick Chinlund

Rating: 6 out of 10

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Overview: Ultraviolet is the ultimate example of style over substance. At every juncture, the goal is to create a futuristic music video piece more than it is to convey an interesting story. That said, some of the visuals are pretty damn cool! The pacing generally tries to stay fast enough to help the viewer forget about the plot holes, and even though the overall movie is predictable, you still find yourself smiling in spite of yourself and enjoying some of the way over-the-top fight scenes.

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The Story: Ultraviolet takes place in the near-future, a time where terrorism is no longer the scourge of society – now it’s viruses. The worst virus is one that turns humans into Hemophages - this virus, created in a laboratory designed to create super-soldiers, is now air-borne, and has forced the population to take extreme precautions including wearing bird-flu virus masks at all times. Hemophages have vampire-like teeth and been genetically modified, giving them enhanced speed, incredible stamina and acute intelligence. Unfortunately, with these extra-human capabilities, they need blood to replenish themselves (this is barely mentioned in the movie), and their bodies slowly wasteaway.

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To the government’s dismay, more and more of the population are being transformed, and, as a civil war looms, they have set out to rid the world of this new race that they now deem menaces to society. Violet, a former nurse at the facility, ended up losing her husband and unborn child when she accidentally contracted the virus. After being a live ginea-pig for the Medical control facility (who also control the new secret police force), Violet escapes and joins the underground Hemophage resistance in attempting to overthrow the medical control police, who are led by their Arch Cardinal, Daxus (played by Nick Chinlund) – and yes, the evil Christian symbolism is in full force here.

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Although Violet has entered the last stages of her sickness, she is given one more mission – to capture the Medical Control’s latest weapon from their headquarter facility and either bring it back or destroy it. After some insane action and escape sequences, Violet succeeds, but discovers that the “weapon” is in fact a small boy named “six” (Cameron Bright). This boy supposedly has genetically altered blood that, if released in the atmosphere, will wipe out all hemophages forever. Her maternal instincts kick and, and she betrays the Hemophage resistance, and is no pursued by both the resistance and the police. The only one she can turn to is her trusted friend and genetic doctor, Garth (played by William Fichtner). But the boy is dying and all options appear hopeless. Because of this, Violet (and the audience) continually says, “What am I doing?”

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The Action – Gun-kata is Back! Equilibrium fans will be happy to see Gun-kata return with a vengeance. Mila Jovovich generally looks terrific doing it – better than Christian Bale (her belly, which is always visible when kicking butt is definitely CUTE!). It’s clear that Mila has trained hard for the part, and looks good on both the gun and sword fight scenes. The problem though is that an unbelievable MI:2 feeling saturates the action scenes. Mila’s powers border on supernatural, and her nazi-like opponents make the OT Storm Troopers seem like special forces! They are ALWAYS flat-out incompetent in every way possible. Additionally, even though it looks cool, there is never a reason for the sword fights which becomes all the more apparent when, literally seconds later, people come in with Uzzis and spray bullets everywhere.

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The FX: The FX in Ultraviolet are truly hit or miss. It appears as if pretty much the whole movie (or vast chunks of it) has been filmed on blue-green screens. This in itself is not a problem. The problem comes in that some scenes are rendered wonderfully while others come off as half done. It’s almost as if they ran out of money during the post-production phase and had to wrap up what they had and package it as best they could. This is a shame because the shots that are completed look wonderful. The attention paid to the colors palettes in virtually every seen is extraodinary. Sometimes I caught myself staring slack-jawed in enjoyment; yet others I was almost holding my nose in disgust.

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The Soundtrack: From beginning to end, Ultraviolet plays like a music video. You get awesome action mixed with high-energy soundtracks. Sometimes you get the wasping highpitched chants, similar to Gladiator or MI:2, and for other scenes, we get bass-thumping, percussive tracks which help move the action along.

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The Acting: Both Jovovich and Cameron Bright are serviceable. William Fichtner is decent for the little screentime he has, but Nick Chinlund is just sour. He has a constant snear, and his performance continually serves to solidify the already one-dimensional “evil bad guy” nature of his character. But truly, Wimmer just does not give his stars much to work from. Virtually the entire story is a sequence of visuals. While Jovovich seems to excel in this mode, keeping mostly believable facial expressions for the bulk of her acting, Chinlund pretty much sucks at it, and seems to struggle in finding the appropriate demeanor.

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What’s Missing? The whole front end of the story for Ultraviolet seems to have been cut, and in its place, we get a synopsis similar to what we see on TV shows recapping episodes that related to the current episode (e.g., “Previously, on Lost….”). Truly, the amount of time it took you to read my two paragraphs above on the story equals the amount of time they devoted to the front-end exposition. It looks like a good 20 minutes or so was boiled down into a 2 minute quick-cut scene to allow us to jump into the action headfirst. But by doing so (again, I’d bet money that this stuff was shot, and furthermore, that we get it on an extended DVD), Ultraviolet significantly cheapens an already weak storyline. Any depth in the characters are lost. Additionally, some of the adds, the BMW adds in particular, really are a bit too overt.

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The Gadgets: As weak as the story is, some of the gadgets in Ultraviolet are just awesome! They really do add a pretty fun dimension to the movie. They include things such as:

Disposable Cell Phone Dispenser: I LOVE the idea of a disposable cell phone dispenser - cell phones are “wafer-thin” and bendable – you insert your credit card, and similar to a paper receipt, a cell phone sheet comes out with a certain number of minutes on it.
Virtual Storage: Ultraviolet also has a believable looking D&D “Bag of Holding” that can be embedded in the body. I think the idea is that Nanotechnology allows the molecules to break down into some other substance, but can be put back-together into guns and swords.
Multi-colored clothes: I fully expect this idea to take hold. Similar to the nano-couch in One Point O, clothes and hair in Ultraviolet can change color at will.
Sunglasses: Yes, Ultraviolet WILL prompt sunglasses sales – bank on it! They are the symbol for “coolness” in movies now, and ultraviolet raises the bar here by making them multifunctional.
HologramsThe holograms, used to making moving imitations of people, similar to those in Ghost in the Shell, are terrific. Wimmer creates some great “break-up” FX for them that really seem to add to their believability.

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The Bottom Line: If you’re looking for cool style over substance, Ultraviolet is one to watch. But while some of the sequences in Ultraviolet are breathtaking, the movie as a whole is not a good one. What little story there is seems to have been lost in editing. Still, some of the visuals are pretty cool, and may be reason enough for you to go watch this. If you’re a Jovovich fan, or want to see more cool Gun-kata scenes, you will enjoy Ultraviolet. But if you’re looking for a deeply textured cyberpunk story, look elsewhere. One point extra granted for the cool gadgets.

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Comments

[…] ~~~UPDATE: REVIEW FOR ULTRAVIOLET POSTED~~~ […]

How about a review of AEON FLUX? The animated series, rather, preferred over the decidedly bland movie…

Damn right, Case, I’m amazed no one’s done a review of the original Aeon Flux series. And does anyone have access to Phantom 2040? That was a good one, too.

Hi Case and DannV - Both Aoen Fluxes are on the drawing board (check out the meatspace). I have the animated series on my desk right now in fact (um, along with about 40 other movies ). For instance, I haven’t done a review of Robocop yet either, but this is not an indication of its quality or my non-desire to review it. I still have a good 60 movies to go, so there’s quite a few I haven’t gotten to yet. I do love the animated series though.

Oh, no pressure SFAM…I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. ‘Just curious if it would be covered eventually. ‘Glad to hear that it is, as FLUX has always been one of my favorite cyberpunk creations. Peter Chung’s original FLUX short is just a masterpiece in and of itself.

I’m trying to average one a day on the reviews. I’ve missed a day or two (for reviews, but have done other content), but in general I’ve made up by adding some on other days. I don’t want to do all the best ones first - otherwise it would be pretty boring going through a month of 4-5 star movies.

Finally saw this. Meh…it was better (in my opinion) than the live-action FLUX movie (as well as RESIDENT EVIL and UNDERWORLD), but…that’s not really saying a whole lot, is it? There was a moment near the beginning where I thought, “Okay, I see where they’re going with this. They’re just TRYING to make this big, ridiculous, over-the-top, preposterous comic-book-style movie.” And, for a while, it worked. It was dumb, but it worked. Then, somewhere near the mid-point, it actually had the nerve to try and start taking itself SERIOUSLY! Huge misstep on their part, because that’s where it all began falling apart for me. An overall average film, which is a shame, because it had its moments…just not enough of them. And the look of the film was interesting. Stick with Wimmer’s EQUILIBRIUM. Even that wasn’t great, but it had more going for it than this.

*Oh, and Wimmer…no more scenes where the hero of the film is surrounded by a thousand baddies and somehow manages to take them all out. I think you’ve worn out your entire career’s supply of those scenes with this one film!

Hi Case, what do you think about the thought that the movie Wimmer delivered is not the movie we see on screen? The beginning especially seems horribly axed. I haven’t gotten the DVD yet, but I didn’t see anything there to indicate it was an extended version. My guess is there “is” a different version floating around somewhere - but whether this ever comes to light probably is based on the sales of the current DVD.

BTW - from that list of films you mention, I’d take Underworld as my favorite. While Shane Brolly’s character was absolutely horrid, the rest of the cast was pretty decent (great in the case of Bill Nighy), the visuals were good, and the story was at least passable.

Well, this was Wimmer’s first time really working within the confines of the studio system, so it wouldn’t shock me even slightly that his film was taken away from him and tinkered with to the point where it was virtually unrecognizable to him. However, I find that much too often, that’s an excuse many directors use when they just realize they’ve made a bad film. ‘Just an elaborate way of whining that, “It wasn’t my fault.” Although, in several cases, I’m sure it IS, in fact, a sad truth about Hollywood.

Of the films I mentioned (I tried to just think of similar films in the piss poor category of female-lead action films), I’d be hard-pressed to pick a “favorite.” They were all pretty awful, if you ask me. UNDERWORLD just took itself far too seriously (despite having such a ridiculous concept) to be any sort of fun. I mean, essentially, we’re watching DRACULA VS. THE WOLF MAN, so why present it like it’s INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (the de-facto GONE WITH THE WIND of vampire films)?

I dunno, if forced, I’d probably say RESIDENT EVIL 2…it was marginally better than the first (which, again, isn’t saying much) and it was, as one publication put it brilliantly, “shittily entertaining.” So stupid, it’s almost fun. Plus…it had zombies…and that’s never a bad thing.

Hi Case, that’s probably an accurate guess about using the studio as an excuse, but in this movie’s case, the beginning sequences just really don’t seem planned to me. It plays FAR more like a flashback that was put together later by an editor raiding about 20 minutes of film to cut it down to five for time and interest reasons.

Hmm, BTW, I probably like Resident Evil 1 better than the second one - I agree neither are terrific movies (I’d probably give both a 6/10 rating if they were in any way cyberpunk). And Underworld just worked for me. I liked the mood, LOVED the scenery, loved some of the performances, and was very impressed with what they were able to accomplish with just 22 million. Plus, how can you not like the director, Len Wiseman’s story - here he goes from down and out and dirt poor, to being a successful director with an ultra hawt-chick movie actress - virtually overnight!

And um, yeah, I do LOVE the old Universal monster movies.

You’re right…the movie seemed very choppy, like it had been butchered, so I don’t doubt it was messed with in those two years they had it sitting on the shelf awaiting release.

“Plus, how can you not like the director, Len Wiseman’s story - here he goes from down and out and dirt poor, to being a successful director with an ultra hawt-chick movie actress - virtually overnight!”

Well, that just makes me hate him more! As far as visuals (or talent) are concerned, he’s no Alex Proyas or Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Yeah, the old Universal horror films were the greatest!

The glasses worn by ultraviolet are awesome. Does anyone know where I can get them both?

Good question. Anyone know the sunglasses used?

OK where do I find her orange tinted sunglasses?

The sunglasses at the end of the movie are by Hugo Boss. I can’t find the ones from the beginning of the movie anywhere.

It’s been released (in Australia) at long last! A bit of a disappointment really, but with some truly cool moments (and some awesome quotes :P). The best part of this movie would have to be Violet (Milla Jovovich).

I plan to watch it again and see if it’s any better second time round.

Hi Hugo, I found that it still keeps its fun the second time around but doesn’t really improve a whole lot. Your first impressions are right on here.

The first 40 minutes didn’t really sit well with me, but after the conversation between Violet and Six…

And you have to appreciate the costuming, the set design and some of the cityscapes; that ‘Wineglass’ tower for instance was fantastic.

It is a light story. I loved the action scenes, and I’m Milla’s fan.

I admired the look of the film and i liked the end.

Six stars.

It is great film. can someone please tell where this movie was film at?

Ultraviolet was filmed at Osaka, Japan.

The story sucks, but the visuals are cool (and often unnecessary, but at least the movie is worth watching ^_^).

A cool “i don’t want to see a movie which forces me to think” movie.

SUCKS, STINKS, BLOWS, PUTRID, REMINDS ME OF FANCY NEW GADGETS THAT MAKE A LOT OF RACKET AND BEEPS AND LIGHTS BUT LAST A MINUTE AND DONT WORK FOR S@&t ALL FLASH NO LIFE, BUT I WOULD LIKE TO SEE MILLA IN SOMETHING DECENT

Hey, I just wanted to comment on the bag of storage idea. In the film they call it “flat-space technology”. This makes me think that it might have to do more with clever physics than nanotechnology. Also, Garth’s lab is actually a “flat-space”, and they are able to exist within’ it. I’m still not sure what Wimmer is getting at here, but I don’t think it’s Nanotech.

Hi LiquidSilver, I seem to remember Nanotech being mentioned somewhere there, but its been a bit since I’ve watched it. I do remember the flat-space technology comment though. You might be right that this is based on something other than nanotech. It really does have the feel of the “wizard’s lair” existing in another dimension we see in so many sword and sorcery stories. So perhaps the flat space technology is a similar thing, but using physics as a basis. I’ll need to watch this again now.

i think ultraviolet is awsome though the whole movie and all the moves are awsome too.ultraviolet ROCKSbig time.

I am interested in finding out the brands of all the sunglasses “Violet” wore, especially the ultraviolet ones. Thanks.

I always thought of the flatspace technology to be one of two things.
1) The equivalent of ‘null space’ technology, in which an item can physically take up zero space through the use of a dimensional pocket (which is literally how the ‘bag of holding’ premise was supposed to work)
2) The idea of ’spatial compression’ there is x amount of empty space in most if not everything, so it’s theorised that you could compress that object (though, not into nothing) into a smaller version of itself, like shrinking a human being into something the height of a coffee mug.

The nanotech aspects works perfectly, not that it’s turned into a different material but the original atomic layout is mapped before it is dispersed into the clothing someone wears for instance, then pulled back out. But that would result in the clothing getting bigger and still being as heavy as if they were carrying the original object.

Wasn’t there something about the hideout being detected by gravitic scanning? Or was that it was impervious to gravitic scanning?

re: flatspace technology.
I think they are implying the bullets and whatnot are being stored 4th dimensionally. due to totally made up physics, the “flatbox” has very small x,y and z dimensions, but has non-zero “theta” dimension, (for those who’ve studied graduate level topology…) this still doesnt explain how she doesnt experience the effects of carrying their mass. if you put the ammo in the flatbox at point A and carry the flatbox to point B and pull out the ammo, some force must have been exerted on the ammo to move it along w the box in 3d space. so even if the flatbox has infinite storage capacity while still taking up diminutive real-space, it should get heavier. considering how many drones she guns down in this movie, that would be like several crates of bullets, probably 100+ kilos. its a cool concept, but obviously requires fundamental breakthrough technology we cant even conceive of today.

hahahahahahaha this movie is so stupid

watch it only after a few drinks and dubbed in a foreign language you don’t understand

badly shot, bad dialogue, weird blurred closeups of Millas face, clearly underbudgeted & unfinished CGI work… a few nicely choreographed fights, but otherwise a mess. ‘Comic books look bright, plastic and cheap’ seemed to be the motif, here.

Makes Aeon Flux look like high art by comparison.

This… had… a… flaming swordfight! NOT cyberpunk… a Chuck Norris movie with less hair. Mila in hot pants is the only saving grace.

@randomrob: the blurring you saw was incompetant post-production done with some dust and scratches video filter applied with very sloppy masking. You know what looks better than tons of FX done horribly? No FX.

Hi Klaw, Ultraviolet is not high quality cyberpunk, but it clearly fits into the genre.

Absolutely SFAM, I wasn’t critisizing your choice to include/review it. I felt that it seemed to be a poseur-cyberpunk film, in the way I feel Underworld is a poseur vampire flick. It knows all the buttons to hit, visually gets close, but it’s spirit and execution are far too serious, clichéd, and ultimately technically sloppy. It’s unfortunate really, the British television show this was based on is quite interesting… and was more about vampires than cyberpunk. A blend of cyberpunk and vampires, done well, would be cool.

Underworld’s a good comparison- flat & unsympathetic characters. You can have no effects and work the characters right and have good SF.

Meh. I kept waiting for a zombie dog to start chasing her thru Umbrella headquarters…

This movie was so crap, I couldn’t even sit through the rental DVD. 6 stars is MIGHTY generous in my opinion. More like 1.

Made in DNA, have you checked out any of my 1 star movie reviews? Truly, it doesn’t belong there. Unlike some reviewers, I actually have actual meaning assigned to each of the star ratings. I see many reviewers who either go with the lowest, a medium-low rating or variants of 8-10 (depending on their scale). If you stick Ultraviolet at a 1 star rating, what do you do with the movies with truly crappy production values, truly horrid acting, and completely incoherent scripts?

That said, even though I think I made my reasons clear above, I could possibly be talked into dropping Ultraviolet down a star - not five though.

6 stars for good intentions. :p

6 STARS!! This movie cannot bear the 6 star mark on its forehead!!! It’s just plain idiotic and boring!!

Although you have to give Kurt Wimmer some credit, i guess it’s not that easy to put out an 88 minutes shampoo commercial.

Well again, if you read the review, I basically see it as a 5 star movie, but granted it an extra star for all the fairly interesting gadgets. Some of those truly are both cool and thought provoking. The movie itself? Um, no, not great. But I will say my reviews are consistent. Good FX, action scenes and production values have to count for something. Whether you like the overall movie or not, Mila Jovovich looks good kicking ass in high FX scenes (she really does this well in most of her movies). For style over substance movies that have high-end special effects, generally they end up somewhere in the 5-6 star range. Take a look at the 5-6 star movies in the link above and you’ll see an absolute bevy of these types of movies. Then look at my 4 star reviews - you’ll see a very different set of movies there. Is this the right place to put them? I dunno - I think so. I think there’s a very large segment of the population who values great FX and action even if the story is seriously flawed. When you get seriously flawed stories, horrid acting, and no real production values, you are LOWER than a movie like Ultraviolet. Personally, I think its a waste of time to go with a 10 point scale if you don’t separate these kinds of movies out. On the flip-side, lacking a coherent story, you have to be really great in style or FX to get a 7 star rating (I, Robot comes to mind).

i was cheking out violets backpack and it seemed unusual does it exist?

p.s. i know you cant fit a kid in there but does the desing realy exist?

where can i find out the brand of sunglasses she wore?

I want her phone number, I need a hero femme fatale.
The Secret Code of the Beast is Revealed…

http://www.grailcode.net

I would’ve given this movie more stars. But, then again, I don’t really think that it fits into the cyberpunk setting. I think it’s like Underworld meets Resident Evil minus the Zombies and Werewolves. Say that gives me an idea…No! mustn’t be distracted. Anyway, I liked the sword fights and the Bio-Corporation (forgot its name) Soldiers. I wouldn’t say they were flat-out incompetent, she’s just a hell of lot better (no, really?), but it would’ve really sucked if those white-clad, sword-specialist soldiers simply got shot by her. But, anyway, I suppose I liked this because it takes the whole future-meets-past-feudal-modern concept (I.E. Digimortal, various RPG’s, War-Hammer and parts of BLAME(!).

Just read the other comments.

Wait a minute…Osaka, Japan…Did you even need to ask? Man I need to Japan!

i like this movie so much…because all its milla are so good action star….super…

jovovich….and its really ice movie…..

all materials that they use for this movie are very true…

where can i buy glasses like hers????

The film Ultraviolet, much like being with a vain/ditzy woman, becomes dull and uniteresting after about 15 minutes of interaction.

what sunglasses is she wearing?? Thank you

where do i get these glasses

hello! Im from mexico city, somebody tell me where i can find the glasses of this movie specially hugo boss transpers dosn´t matttter if is in US. thankU

fuck you man

Not to take anything away from Japan, but the commentary by Jovovich says most of it was filmed in Hong Kong. Yea, its pretty cool most buildings and interiors in the movie are real places there.

This movie is sooooo lame and illogical. It was hard for me to stand through the whole thing. Firearms appearing out of nowhere, a child being transported in a suitcase big enough for a laptop and so on.

I watched this movie a few years ago on DVD; didn’t hate it, didn’t love it.
A month ago i bought a 32″ LCD-TV-Set, 1080p. Amongst others i fed the Ultra Violett-BD to it. And WOW! I could not believe, that i didn’t love this flick earlier! My brain was filled up with color, contrast, moves, speed and coool gadgets, there was no place for a deep story in my head anyway. So that worked out My love for computer games may helped in liking this flick. And … omg … motorbikes driving up skyscrapers … and i can watch from the wildest, coolest angles … sigh. Simply love it.

Yo. You told me once that I would never get a girl to kiss my cum crank…. well, I did. That bitches name was Tchee, and she sucked the cream out of my pensil. So TAKE THAT, HARKY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlQyujICkMM

[…] for Quiet Earth, better late than never I suppose), The Gene Generation follows the path taken by Ultraviolet and the live-action Aeon Flux with a gun-totting, leather clad femme fatale working for the […]

My major issue with this movie was it had a few weak characters. The villain, for one. But also having the entire film center around a goddamn kid. That always screws up movies.. Think of T2 (parts of which seemed like a nerf commercial, i.e. - John Conner and the kid from Salure your shorts riding on a dirt bike while listening to guns & roses.. Rad!), or the phantom menace. Some of us, just really don’t care for, or watch movies to see, children. Lame!

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