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Vampires on the wagon

By Colin Covert
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA
Friday, Mar 31, 2006, Page 16

In Ultraviolet, fairly well-behaved vampires are hunted down by a totalitarian government. PHOTO COURTESY OF BVI

Ultraviolet is a race against time that feels like a slow, stumbling death march to the end credits.

A frenetic battle between vampires and humans, it is set in a future where holograms are indistinguishable from real people, gravity can be neutralized and auto-matic weapons materialize out of thin air. But some things remain the same: The ideal attire for samurai swordfights is a skintight, midriff-baring catsuit; villains chuckle maniacally while explaining the details of their doomsday plan to the good guy, and henchmen politely attack the heroine one or two at a time.

"I was born into a world you might not understand," intones the film's namesake in the introductory scenes, but it is a place intimately familiar to comic book fans.

Ultraviolet is played by Milla Jovovich, whose perfectly toned abs get as much screen time as her face, and do more of the acting. The character began life as a mere human, but became a courier/assassin for the persecuted vampire minority after a virus turned her and many others thirsty.

Ultraviolet may dress like Eurotrash, but she does have maternal instincts. PHOTO COURTESY OF BVI

It's not clear why humans can't coexist with the vampires. These vampires don't suck neck or hiss at crucifixes. Their main offense is dressing like Eurotrash and strutting around as if they were on Planet Catwalk. Still, a totalitarian government is dedicated to wiping them out. Its latest strategy involves a human bio-weapon named Six, whose blood has been altered in a way that makes it deadly to vampires, or to humans, depending on whose version of the confusing narrative you believe.

Film Notes: Ultraviolet Directed by: Kurt Wimmer Starring: Milla Jovovich (Violet), Cameron Bright (Six), Nick Chinlund (Daxus), William Fichtner (Garth), Sebastien Andrieu (Nerva), Ida Martin (Young Violet) Running time: 88 minutes Taiwan Release: Today

Both sides want him dead, and there's a self-destruct time bomb ticking inside him. Ultraviolet's maternal instincts flare at his plight and she kills approximately 19,000 extras to keep Six safe. She also finds time to take the lad to a park and spin him on a merry-go-round. That's no way to hide the most hunted person on Earth, but if you're going to buy into vampires and levitation, why quibble?

Writer/director Kurt Wimmer paints his sci-fi world in garish lollipop hues and the flattest, ugliest, most mediocre CGI graphics this side of Tron. Most of the action scenes are acrobatic exercises in computer mathematics that are both literally and figuratively by-the-numbers. It's maddeningly repetitive and dull.

Only when a brazenly nutty detail is tossed in does our interest spark. One troop of robot warriors smashes to smithereens against Ultraviolet's samurai blade like porcelain Hummel figures. This is a flagrant violation of everything we know about killer-robot design, but it looks sort of interesting. And while watching Ultraviolet, "sort of interesting" is a level of excitement you're grateful to achieve.
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