It’s one thing to offer up stylish visuals to astound audiences. You also need to have the right director to handle all of the action and visual effects wizardry, not to mention a budget that can produce results. Ulraviolet has the visuals, but neither of the latter to make it work.

Set in one of those oppressed futures humans keep finding themselves in, Milla Jovovich finds herself struggling to survive after being granted some sensational powers that also seem to let the motorcycles she’s riding in defy gravity as well. Short on logic and heavy on action, Ultraviolet is all missed potential.

The problem is that the movie might have worked as mindless action. However, the action that is here is either overdone (glass armor… really?), impossible to follow, or filled with hokey effects that give this a made-for-TV feel. Long shots of the cityscape fall flat, failing to generate the intended effect. Costuming is hilarious, including nose plugs that would never catch on even if your life depended on it.

At a brisk 87 minutes, this one should have flown by. It feels a lot longer. Interaction between Jovovich and a small child she rescues (Cameron Bright) is rushed, but when they’re on screen, it’s not interesting either. Obnoxious techno blares behind everything, ruining its fair share of sequences.

The other visuals, those that bring out incredible color, also flatten out faces. Half the scenes look as if the cast has pasty white make-up smeared across their faces, doing nothing to aid the incoherent and ridiculous dialogue. 2004’s Sky Captain handled all of this much better (albeit with less color), and provided a decent narrative to go along with it.

In a movie era where we’re bombarded with visual treats, Ultraviolet is instantly forgettable. The superhero/comic book genre is too crowded for lackluster efforts such as this. Maybe if director Kurt Wimmer had his way and the studio didn’t edit this down severely (you can see many of the cuts online), this would have fared better. Either way, what we’re given is sloppy and uninteresting.