ULTRA VIOLET
US/China, 2005, 87 minutes, Colour.
Milla Jovovich, Cameron Bright, Nick Chinlund, William Fichtner.
Directed by Kurt Wimmer.
A computer game transferred from a small screen to a big screen with all the style and action, plus pounding music – and the player becoming an active watcher rather than making choices at a console. This means that Ultraviolet is aimed solely at videogame players.
The opening credits highlight the comic book nature of the enterprise, with Milla Jovovich (used to this kind of thing from the Resident Evil films, though required here to be extraordinarily fit and gymnastically able) as Violet. She makes Aeon Flux look relaxed. She then explains the future world where humanity has been ravaged by a contaminated blood virus – and that we, the audience might not understand. Her mission is to retrieve a case from the government for the rebels. The contents of the case turns out to be a young boy (Cameron Bright) who may have a solution for the virus problem. Apart from Nick Chinlund as a dastardly government scientist and William Fichtner as a compassionate scientist, that’s about all the plot there is. The rest is chases and elaborately choreographed fights to a pastiche of Carmina Burana music and chant.
But, production design and photography (on quality high digital cameras) must have been a dream for the technicians. The sets (and some of the characters) look like video games rather than reality, so that the film always looks elaborately artificial so that we know we are in a game. This eye-popping design is combined with top line computer graphics so that even the non-player has to be in admiration with the look and sound of the film while trying to bypass the body count.
1.The intended audience? Young audience? Men? Women? Fans of graphic comics?
2.The technical side of the film: the elaborate production design, costume design? Sets? Computer graphics? Cinema techniques – high digital photography? Colour schemes and design? The semi-classic musical score? The combination to give the impression of a video game on a big screen?
3.The credits, the covers of the various comics? The introduction to the character of Violet?
4.Violet and her comment about the future, the society, people not understanding it? The visuals of the future? Cities, buildings? The use of Shanghai for much of the design?
5.The situation as explained: the history of the virus, people being contaminated, those with the virus being exiled? The government and its attack on those infected?
6.Violet, her pregnancy, her being infected, her being terminated? Her escape? Joining the underground? Twelve years passing?
7.Violet, on the motorbike, her passing the entry tests for the laboratory? Her getting in, claiming the case, discovering that the child was inside? The choreography for her fights? Gymnastics? Swords, rhythmic gymnastics? The opposition – human, robots? The confrontation with Daxus? The real courier coming? Violet and her escape?
8.Six, in the case, the code on the case? His age, experience, a special child, human? Violet and her maternal instincts? Wanting to protect him? Taking him to Garth? Garth wanting to do the experiments? The pursuits and chases with Six? Her inability to save him? His being taken? Her realisation that he was still alive?
9.The interactions with Garth, his tenderness towards Violet? Wanting to do something, to save her? Her return, the dangers, the blood, her transformations, the fights? The final confrontation with Daxus? The darkness, the fire, her defeat of him? The rescue of Six?
10.Daxus, the villain, government, phobic about germs? His methods, his henchmen? Experimentation? The irony that he himself was infected? The flashbacks? The final fight with Violet? Garth, the scientist, his support of the rebels?
11.The background of the future? The army, the militants? The contrast with ordinary people in the streets? Television programs? The scientists, the laboratories? The hospitals? The sick patients?
12.An exciting presentation of a video game – it being displayed on a big screen without the audience having to make their choices or fight the fights?
