In flagrant defiance of all evidence to the contrary, Ultraviolet is the Greatest Movie EVER.
4 Minutes, 37 Seconds In:
Nick Chinlund as Daxus. I love this guy.
8 Minutes, 22 Seconds In:
Cameron Bright as Six. Not quite so loveable.
CLOSING THOUGHT!
Come on, Katherine, the movie wasn’t THAT bad…
COMING SOON!
Wait…what?
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
All right, that does it. This is getting out of hand. Listen and listen well: even Uwe Boll movies have more entertainment value than this film. I cannot bring myself to purchase Ultraviolet for even $3, and I say this as a person who owns the 3-disc set of Windtalkers and the Criterion editions of Armageddon as well as The Rock. Plus both Bad Boys movies. And I bought all of those new, for God’s sake.
At any given moment, another piece inside of me can die. The sign of that will be when I own Ultraviolet Unrated Edition and view it as a postmodern comedy masterpiece. Pray that I never make a day out of watching Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux back to back. Of course, this very thing may now happen within the next few days.
Perhaps what stops me is the knowledge that even the Unrated Edition is still not the director’s original 120 minute cut. Yeah, that part in the middle where nothing happens for 45 minutes? There’s 30 more minutes of colossally lame Photoshop/CGI effects applied to EVERYTHING including faces (as in, low-res pixelated Playstation 1 cutscene; http://tinyurl.com/uvhl5 explains why that is) and piss-poor close-up/fast-cutting cinematography so that you can’t actually SEE the fights lying around somewhere.
Hey guys: I understand you’re generic thugs meant to be fodder, but you have GUNS which fire BULLETS. Try at least SHOOTING them at the person armed with a sword instead of just running up to within sword stabbing distance. I have no objection to seeing one person slaughter armies singlehandedly, but at least make it seem like the people know how to use the weapons they’re holding. Especially if they’re yakuza on a rooftop.
Dear Hollywood: stop making PG-13 action movies. This is a movie with people dressed in all white that get into swordfights AND THERE’S NO BLOOD. Also: Milla Jovovich is not attractive. Therefore, she has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Stop putting her in movies.
I eagerly look forward to hearing future GME podcasts talking about how Robocop 3, The Next Karate Kid, or Highlander: Endgame is somehow the Greatest Movie EVER. By my calculations, one third of the Greatest/Worst Movie EVER assessments are in fact, completely wrong and thus, you probably agree with at least one of those statements.
I love you, too, Daryl.
I must admit, the majority of my pleasure in watching this film came from watching Katherine squirm. And I love this film in the same way you love an ugly puppy; with heavy doses of pity and disappointment mixed in.
Perhaps I should have put the term Greatest in quotation marks? I.e. the “Greatest” Movie EVER.
I do agree that Highlander: Endgame is, in fact, the Greatest Movie EVER. But then again, I also think that Highlander II: Renegade Version is the Greatest Movie EVER. How is this possible, you may wonder? I am a paradox, a riddle in an enigma wrapped in a quandry shot through the event horizon of a singularity into Unknown Space, where Azathoth dwells.
I do agree about the PG-13 action movies, although I think PG-13 horror movies are an even more odious thing that Hollywood has foisted upon us.
For true vampires one must watch Vampire In Brooklyn. Screw those hemophages! I haven’t seen Ultraviolet but I do have a soft spot for Milla Jovovich. So maybe one of these days.
Did the April Fools’ episode get released early..? I can’t imagine that a film as weak as this would be found in the company of Commando!
Yeah, I can’t…I’m gonna have to call shenanigans on this one, too, and I actively campaign for the glory of GYMKATA (which, after Amazon and Warner had their contest that lets the public pick which title from the vaults gets released, is finally coming to DVD). ULTRAVIOLET just defeated me, though, possibly because I kept hearing how it was nonstop action, but instead of nonstop action, it was nonstop “show a hundred bad guys, then show Milla standing in front of them. Cut to other side of a door with some battle sound effects, then have the door open and show Milla walking in.”
Of course, you can make everything right again by championing GYMKATA. Or Sho Kosugi’s “Ninja-size” work-out video, featuring Sho Kosugi and His Ninjettes.
And Daryl — Highlander: Endgame? Please. Now The Quickening? THAT might be the greatest movie ever.
Gymkata is undeniably the Greatest Movie EVER. Ditto, anything involving Sho Kosugi.
When I found out Gymkata was coming to DVD, I think I exploded with sheer exuberance. I’ve been picking bits of bone and hair-follices out my keyboard ever since.
You laugh, but some modern bullet proof vest/body armor have ceramic plates in them.
They deflect and break upon impact which prevents penetration. Many of the military issued body armor in Iraq are augmented with ceramic plates.
I think the difference between Ultraviolet ceramic body armor and real ceramic body armor, is that the real body armor is somehow designed to also stop the bullet.
But none of this matters, since a thousand guys with guns are powerless against one person with a sword.
Now, when Violet has to fight Ogami Ito…
I have to agree with Keith on this one, since the use of ceramic armor in the movie is a stylistic choice, not a realistic one. The only reason the guards wear gas-masks and glass armor is so that jets of vapor and shards of shattered ceramic can replace gouts of blood. As Daryl mentioned, it’s all about the PG-13 rating.
Honestly, I think it’s a rather creative and cinematographically interesting way of including all the violence without including the consequences of the violence. But it’s also kind of silly when you view it from an objective viewpoint.
I can’t wait until that little kid grows up and becomes Wil Wheaton.
I don’t know. I liked ULTRAVIOLET in a mindless guilty pleasure sort of way.
But is it TRULY worthy of being called “Greatest Movie Ever?”
By that same note: Paul, please, please, please don’t do GUNHED. I (kinda-sorta) liked that movie…but is that tepid, repetitive, confusing film REALLY worthy of being called “Greatest Movie Ever?” I mean, we live in a universe where INFRA-MAN and BATMAN: THE MOVIE exist. Why vaporize electrons?
Incidentally, I anticipate that 20-30 years from now, the movie star working today that people will remember the most will be “Mila Jovovich.” Mila is a female that does action films EXCLUSIVELY, as her niche. For someone like that, we have to look back to Pam Grier in the seventies for movies like ARENA, COFFY, and SCREAM, BLACULA, SCREAM.
I will admit, the fights were fast and exciting, and Mila is a beautiful, graceful woman, and a motorcycle driving on the side of a building is something I have never seen before, and this movie has more quotable, swaggeringly macho lines than Pat Swayze in ROAD HOUSE…but still.
“Greatest Movie Ever?”
Are you mental?
Julian, for blaspheming Gunhed, you are officially “b4nn3d 4 life”. ;-p
This is positively the worst $9 I ever spent on a movie. I was REALLY looking forward to it, being that Equilibrium is one of my all time favourite movies. The thick film of CG the is pasted over the entire movie happily distracts you from MIlla’s horrible ability to act, the plot that is 1 paragraph long, and the action sequences that were choreographed by a 12 year old. Kurt Wimmer was given way to much money and decided it would be a good idea to coat the celluloid in CG vaseline, he did so much better with soooo much less. And I disagree with Daryl, Uwe Boll is still much much much much much much worse.
Ultraviolet actually spawned an anime
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=9705
Not even my favorite male seiyuu Seki Tomokazu motivates me to watch it. Now, if I could inflict it on say, Daryl Surat, Clockwork Orange style…