ULTRAVIOLET

In an unspecified future, humanity has been shaken by a virus that has turned much of humankind into bloodthirsty creatures. The hemophages have been fought and partly destroyed; now the few remaining take refuge in small communities ready for an insurrection. Violet is a hemophage who contracted the disease while she was pregnant, then interrupted with the consequent loss of the child; now Violet fights in the resistance and, after seizing a government-protected briefcase, discovers she has come into possession of a weapon capable of destroying all of humanity. With government forces on her tail and hemophages eager for destruction at her heels, Violet will try to protect the weapon, which is none other than an unsuspecting child. One remains highly bewildered during the viewing of "Ultraviolet," one of the lowest steps ever reached by Hollywood action/horror. However, one point must be made clear: "Ultraviolet" has little or nothing to do with the horror genre, so much so that it seems almost out of place in this database; the only element that might remotely connect it to the genre is the insertion (completely futile, by the way) of the vampire figure, anyway treated not under the gothic or gore aspect, but poorly inserted into a futuristic context that attempts to wink at Orwellian themes. The starting point from which the entire reflection at the base of "Ultraviolet" is triggered is of marked (and overly ostentatious) social character: an attempt is made to show a society subjected to a totalitarian and racist regime that persecutes the different ones trying to restore the balance between races; naturally, a resistance is established whose members are sometimes too selfish and power-hungry to the point of assimilating to their own antagonists. How many times has the viewer encountered these themes? Surely countless are the attempts by modern cinema (especially American) to stage subversive and pessimistic plots (but with edifying conclusions), but often with respectable results. With "Ultraviolet," the preference is given to the video game aesthetic, the 360-degree action that gives no respite to the viewer: for 88 minutes, it seems to be watching a long TV spot, a million-dollar music video, a non-interactive sequence of a console video game...in short, an hypertrophic, exaggerated, excessive work, swollen with pop aesthetics and imbued with a cinetism pushed to nausea. At the end of the viewing, a sigh of relief is drawn, like when one gets off from an unpopular amusement park ride and quickly tries to forget the just-lived experience. If the frequent chromatic changes affecting Violet's hair and clothes can be pleasing to the eye, the numerous visual special effects that crowd the film seem less successful, all rather fake and, if we want, rudimentary compared to the perfection reached by CGI, as if "Ultraviolet" had a hasty post-production, thus resulting incomplete. The numerous action scenes are poorly choreographed, so much so that they are often confusing and unfluid. The direction of Kurt Wimmer (already author of the much more valid "Equilibrium") is certainly dynamic and devoted to virtuosity, even if not too personal (just look at his previous feature film to "not recognize" the author), while the performances never reach sufficiency: Milla Jovovich is credible in the role of the vampire expert in martial arts, but she seems to simply replicate the actions already committed in "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" without any performative inventiveness, while the omnipresent Cameron Bright ("Godsend"; "X-men: The Last Stand"), in the role of the child-weapon to be protected, is as odious and inexpressive as always, not to mention the unlikely dictator/villain Nick Chinlund, anonymous actor chosen for a part that does not suit him. Kurt Wimmer wanted from "Ultraviolet" a personal version of "Gloria" in a sci-fi action key, but he only managed to direct the ugliest action/horror ever, capable even of making one reappraise the "Hellbound" with Chuck Norris. Congratulations!