To say that Ultraviolet is not as bad as one might expect is like saying that drinking kerosene is not as unpleasant as one might imagine: even though it might have been worse, I still do not recommend the experience.
The Story
Set in the future, the movie, which is based on the comic book series of the same name, begins with Violet, played by Milla Jovovich, infiltrating a building of some sort and stealing what she believes to be a weapon. She doesn’t quite make it out before her deception is discovered and a fight which ranges over the entire city ensues. It is quite a long fight scene… in fact, I think it is still going on. There are several moments where it appears to be over but it just starts up again.
From Jovovich’s narration, we learn that R&D is into weapons' development and has created a disease which turned people into what are essentially vampires, though they call them hemophages, or something like that. Violet contracted the disease, miscarried her child, and is now fighting with her fellow vampires against a human menace bent on wiping them out.
She brings the newly acquired weapon back to home base only to discover that the weapon she is carrying in a briefcase size container is actually a child (something made possible by the advanced technology of the future society). The leader of the vampires, Sebastien Andrieu’s Nerva, wants to kill the child, called Six and played by Cameron Bright, because supposedly he carries something in his genes that might be synthesized to destroy all vampires. Violet won’t allow it and more fighting ensues. To the best of my knowledge, these fights are also still going on.
The Acting
The acting is wretched, though not uniformly so. William Fichtner of Invasion fame performs admirably despite the script, and – amazingly – the young actor Cameron Bright does a halfway decent job. Those of you who know how truly terrible child actors can be, will appreciate the implausibility of this one standing out in a movie in which his adult peers fail so miserably.
Milla Jovovich, burdened by the weight of excessive corny one-liners which inevitably precede a stroke of her sword or a burst of shots from her guns, collapses under the pressure, and she does better than most. If you can imagine a movie in which actors, poorly chosen for their roles and with only a modest amount of talent, are tasked with spouting lines of dialogue that Sir Derek Jacobi would be hard pressed to deliver and sound good doing it, then you have an idea of what goes on in this particular film. It is worth highlighting Sebastien Andrieu, who tries to sound menacing but winds up sounding French (although this may have been on purpose.)
Article comments
1 - hazenwarrior
I feel as if I watched the worst movie ever, next to Leonard the 8th and Attack of the Killer Tomatos. My biggest problem with this movie was that I couldn't turn it off fast enough.
2 - SOULSHAKER
YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE LIKED THE MOVIE BUT I THOUGHT IT WAS A EXCELLENT SCI-FI, THATS RIGHT SCI-FI, YOU KNOW FUTURISTIC. WHEN THE MATRIX CAME OUT IT DID HAVE SOME RESTRAINT, OTHER THAN BULLETS TRAVELING THROUGH THE AIR IN A PERFECTLY STRAIGHT LINE. IF YOU DONT LIKE THE MOVIE THATS ALRIGHT BUT DONT ATTACK EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE MOVIE,ITS THE 21ST CENTURY THE DAYS OF GONE WITH THE WIND ARE OVER, OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AROUND,REMEMBER WE CAN CLONE NOW.
3 - Lictre
Ballistics comment for Soulshaker there. The ranges at which the guns are fired in The Matrix means that their ballistic drops would be measured in very small fractions of an inch, which means that they would not show a ballistic drop that would be perceptible.
Given:In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound is 343 meters per second (1,125 ft/s)
For example, a bullet traveling at 1000 feet per second (a subsonic round, which simplifies matters of calculation by not having to deal with trans-sonic effects) would travel 100 feet in 1/10th of a second. For a bullet fired parallel to the ground, the amount of drop would be 1/2 A(acceleration) (32 feet/second/second)times the duration of fall in seconds squared.
(.5x32) = 16x.01= .16 feet, or approximately a 2 inch drop at 100 feet.
The sin of 1 degree at 100 feet would be 1.745 feet, or about 21 inches.
I've neglected the resistance of the air, which would complicate the matter, but for practical purposes, I think this a reasonable approximation of the scale of projectile drop from a subsonic projectile at 100 feet, and would show why the 'straight line trajectories' in The Matrix are neither unreasonable or unrealistic.