Part 2: Ultraviolet (2006) Retrospective

Part One: 

 

In part one, I uncovered a bit of the backstory of how I came to discover this forgotten film and explored not only the its origins and setup, but its failure to engage audiences and its disownment by the lead actress and writer/director. Unlike a film such as Alien 3, which was also a troubled production that was ultimately disowned by its director, Ultraviolet doesn’t seem to have developed a notable cult following or to have been reappraised by many in the years since its release. Maybe it just needs more time, or maybe I really do have awful taste and there’s nothing redeemable about either the theatrical version or the unrated version. I don’t believe the latter is true. I also believe Alien 3’s assembly cut is closer to what director David Fincher wanted to put in theatres originally in comparison to Ultraviolet’s unrated cut, which doesn’t add or change quite enough to make the same kind of impact.

To elaborate on Ultraviolet’s post-production problems, it’s pretty clear to me that a somewhat more coherent, more character-driven version of the film existed in an earlier cut, and the studio pressured the director to deliver a product more akin to Resident Evil: increased action, decreased emotion, and quicker, not longer and slower. Somewhere along the way the powers that be took the film out of its creator’s hands and packaged it as a doomed lite version. It’s evident in the slight-yet-significant changes from the theatrical cut to the unrated cut. Wimmer’s original cut was around two hours, which probably would have felt less like a music video (for better or for worse, we’ll never know), but I don’t know if it would have been any worse overall. I highly doubt we will ever see his original vision completed and released, but there is plenty I genuinely love about the version that I am most familiar with.

What I should begin with is the face of the film: Milla Jovovich herself. Many say she’s a bad actress, and…look. I understand the criticisms of many of her performances, but I truly believe she is more capable than many films (this one included) lead people to believe. Skills of hers that cannot be argued against: her physicality, primarily in action sequences, her ability to deliver dialogue with the utmost sincerity (even if it’s absolutely ridiculous), and, contrastingly, her comedic delivery (often forgotten, as she’s done more action than comedy over the course of her career; citation: The Fifth Element). There's also that serious-yet-seductively-intense expression of hers, which she pulls off many times throughout this film. In Ultraviolet, she not only excels in doing the many stunts with grace, but she looks insanely good while doing them. Jovovich is up there for me, in terms of performance and looks combined, with the greatest action heroines in cinema history, even if her films themselves are not classics.  

Speaking of Milla Jovovich’s face…what’s with the way people’s faces look in Ultraviolet? In fact, what’s with the way everything looks in this movie, with uncanny digital clarity yet frequently texture-less environments? What’s with the wonky visual effects, too? It seems the computer-generated parts of the film, particularly during the motorcycle chase at the end of act one, were unfinished, as a result of Kurt Wimmer being locked out of post-production and the studio hastily completing the film to meet its intended release date. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but the CGI does look like a video game a lot of the time. This film was also shot digitally, and a soft focus was used on the actor’s faces to make it appear more like a comic book. I think it’s a cool idea, but also, it looks very odd most of the time, as if the actor’s have no definition to their skin.

Moving on past just her face, I don’t think Milla has ever looked better in any movie than in Ultraviolet. Having worked as a model prior to starting her acting career, she’s absolutely stunning as Violet, but again, she isn’t just there as eye candy. She fits into this high-tech world well enough, yet also stands out in every shot, in a very superhero-esque way. One shot that I think captures her sexy/serious vibe the best is during the final battle as she’s infiltrating the ArchMinistry to save Six and kill Daxus, when the doors open and the camera moves up from her feet to her face. Milla herself cites this as one of her favourite shots in the film during the DVD commentary.

The design of this futuristic world is based largely around real locations in China, particularly Shanghai, with buildings quite unlike what’s seen in a typical North American skyline, but it’s the way the technology in this world works that I find so interesting. Flat space technology provides a story mechanic for how Violet is able to wield multiple swords and so much firepower while still wearing that skintight leather outfit, for the tech is “dimension compressing” and allows a person to store many items in something as small as a bracelet—or, in the case of the suitcase containing the weapon, store a whole human child. It looks like Six is floating in a weird digital pool, and I didn’t get it the first time I watched it, but as I rewatched it, I started to understand how this fictional world worked, and I dug it. But, I find it frustrating that cool ideas like flat space technology are thrown at the audience with such little explanation and included primarily for the sake of being cool, without much consideration for the kind of impact tech like that would have. There’s a throwaway line about it being “very rare” but that’s not really a good enough excuse, especially when Violet and Garth seem to have unlimited access to it.  

I still think Wimmer had a lot of great ideas crammed into the story, with others being the projection phones, used twice by Violet to thwart her pursuers, and the gravity bending, which allows Violet to flee from enemies on the ceiling and ride her motorcycle up a building. Her machine guns with daggers coming out the handles are so badass, and that’s the key to the design of the film: everything is badass, and you could say it’s all just for the sake of it, but the fact that it’s also threaded into the purpose of the tech makes it even better. Violet being able to change her hair and outfit colours is also a unique and entrancing feature of her character. Much of it feels very Japanese-inspired, in a similar way to how the Wachowski’s were inspired with The Matrix.

It can’t be argued that Ultraviolet is a very stylized film, but stylization is not an excuse for a lack of logic. Why, exactly, are there so many layers of security for getting into the facility to retrieve the weapon, but then it’s relatively easy for Violet to escape? Don’t think about that—look! Big flashy explosions and gunfire and kicking! How is Violet able to hide away with Garth in his trailer-turned-lab with no problems? Daxus just…can’t find it?  How infectious, exactly, is hemoglophagia? Some characters wear full masks, others wear just nose filters, and some wear nothing over their face. It depends on the scene, I guess. Who are the Blood Chinois? They’re an example of something that just pops into the film for one scene; this gang-like group of fighters seem to have some cool lore that never gets explained, and then they never show up again. Teenage me: very cool, I enjoyed that scene and their addition to the worldbuilding. Adult me: as cool as that was, it was also completely unnecessary and added almost nothing to the story.

A major criticism of Ultraviolet that I don’t condone is the action. Many call it tacky and derivative, and while I wouldn’t call myself an aficionado or anything, I think I have a pretty good idea of what makes an action scene work, and what works for me in most of Ultraviolet’s action scenes is the variety of shot choices and creative ways for Milla to take down the bad guys. It’s not like when Alice is just mindlessly gunning down zombies in Resident Evil; when Violet's gun runs out of ammo in her first big action sequence, she disassembles it and beats the enemies to bits with the pieces! Later, when she encounters the Blood Chinois and gets completely surrounded by dozens of armed men on a rooftop while she herself is unarmed, she uses “gun kata” to dodge every single bullet they fire and force them to get into the paths of each other’s bullets, resulting in all of them killing each other and her walking away without a scratch.

The first time I saw this bullet dodging scene, I had never seen anything like it, and I was blown away. Looking at it now, I recognize many of its shortcomings, but I still think it’s shot in a pretty innovative way. There are ultimately too many shots of people’s eyes and sunglasses and shots going into glasses throughout the movie, but in this scene, the camera is very dynamic, and we can at least tell what’s going on, in terms of the action, even if it is pretty cheesy and totally unrealistic. I haven’t mentioned yet that Violet also has super speed and agility, but unlike some films that botch the quick speed superpower, I don’t instantly laugh or roll my eyes when she starts moving ultra fast. I think the quick movements are handled well, there’s an effective amount of slow motion used (it never gets into Zack Snyder territory), and you can tell Milla did many of her own stunts—not just here, but in many other instances, as well. 

I’ll admit, some of the action scenes are lacking compared to others. I’ve already mentioned the unfinished CGI in the motorcycle chase, but a later fight with Violet’s former hemophage ally, Nerva, ends when she impales his head on her sword, and the shot always looked goofy to me, especially with the sound of his stupid little whimper coming out as the blade goes in. The action may get repetitive at times, but for how much of it there is, I find most of it is cool, fun, and has forward momentum. The opening, with soldiers being deployed like bombs and smashing into the side of a skyscraper, then rolling in and infiltrating a lab, is an awesome way to kick things off…but then, the second the action stops, the movie trips over its own untied shoelaces, and those shoelaces are, unfortunately, the pages of dialogue.

Next time, in the wrap up of my exploration of this deeply flawed film, I’ll get into some of the overarching problems that define Ultraviolet as a project that may not have been doomed from the very start, but certainly was doomed to fail in the end just the same.