大象传媒

"I was born into a world you may not understand," says a purple-haired Milla Jovovich at the opening of Ultraviolet, and she's not wrong. Kurt Wimmer's film is a glossy dollop of violence churned from the mashed remnants of better films. Milla is Violet, a diseased "hemophage" struggling to protect an innocent child from an evil dictator who wants her kind wiped out. Why? Well, the kid might be a deadly super weapon. Or not. Who can say?

Certainly not Mr Wimmer, whose directorial vision might kindly be described as blurry. Ultraviolet is a compendium of critic's clich茅s given literal life on screen. The script isn't simply nonsensical, or confused, or poorly structured. It's actual nonsense. The acting isn't under-powered, or pretentious, or half-hearted. It's laugh-out-loud ludicrous. The CGI isn't slightly cheap or poorly detailed - it's Playstation quality. And so on.

"UPSTAGED BY HIS OWN NOSEPLUGS"

The only redeeming feature is a production design so outrageously mad that you will genuinely have no idea what you're watching for more than half the time. Milla shoots and slashes her way through uncountable hordes of faceless minions with nary a drop of blood or a grunt of effort. Cameron Bright, Hollywood's spooky moppet du jour, trails behind her with an expression that suggests he is working on a long division problem. The villain, one Nick Chinlund, is consistently upstaged by his own noseplugs. Wimmer's last film Equilibrium was every bit as daft as this but got by on charm and a sense of humour. Ultraviolet, sadly, has neither.