Quote:
Though it might be dubious praise to say so, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is probably the best film of Uwe Boll's career. Boll, the purveyor of such "efforts" as Alone in the Dark and Bloodrayne, has genuinely outdone himself in his rarified canon of video game adaptations and cheapie epics, albeit by stealing shamelessly from directors who actually know how to navigate his films' A-list counterparts. In other words, Boll's latest evokes the form but not the content of such film series as Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars, which means that few if any fantasy fans will be deceived into believing that Dungeon Siege is a legitimate endeavor rather than the same everything-must-go yard sale of clichés and familiar formulas the director mined for his previous work.
I have no idea how to even recount the plot of ItNotK - I've never played the game, and Boll's storytelling faculties are awful - so the best I can do is list the other movies and pop culture references I saw reflected in the scenes that comprise the film's running time: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Princess Bride, Gladiator, Friday the 13th, the aforementioned LOTR, Pirates and Star Wars films, and Katherine McPhee's creepy May-September relationship with her 41-year old boyfriend. Essentially Jason Statham (The Transporter) plays Farmer, a simple laborer who becomes an instrumental player in an epic battle when Duke Fallow (Matthew Lillard) conspires with a magician named Gallian (Ray Liotta) to overthrow King Konreid (Burt Reynolds).
Additionally, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, Kristanna Loken, Brian J. White all show up as key players in this battle for mystical-medieval supremacy - all of which begs the question precisely how Boll manages to enlist such a recognizable (if perhaps not altogether credible) roster of names to flesh out his little adaptations. One can understand how in 2005, when Boll previously only helmed House of the Dead, he could secure the talents of folks like Christian Slater, Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff. But certainly Statham has achieved a legitimate level of stardom to avoid z-grade actioners like this, and folks like Ray Liotta and John Rhys-Davies can't possibly have reached financial straits as desperate as to require their participation in adventure films as flimsy and unengaging as this.
Mind you, not all of the cast members have previously represented themselves as formidable thespians - Loken's claim to fame is playing a super-hot, emotionless automaton in Terminator 3, and Forlani has given only one good performance in her career, in Martin Brest's Meet Joe Black. But it boggles the mind how much money must have been thrown at each of these actors to get them to sign onto the production; while Brian White delivers the most compelling and believable performance in the film, even the comparably unfamiliar star of films like Stomp the Yard and Mr. 3000 seems aware that his chief motivation is cashing a check, not charging into the fray. Meanwhile, worst performance honors go to the abysmal Matthew Lillard, with a nod to Liotta as the scenery-chewing villain Gallian.
Otherwise, there is such a mind-numbing accumulation of non sequiturs and senseless acts in the film that it would quite literally waste cyberspace to try and list all of them. But why do the Krug warriors - basically LOTR's orcs with less intelligence or dexterity - light themselves on fire and then launch themselves via catapult? Or who came up with the idea that Gallian would attempt to incapacitate Farmer with four well-placed books, magically attached to his ankles and wrists? And perhaps most importantly, where the hell did the ninjas come from? That these questions are not answered is unimportant, since Boll never explains plenty of other things that are fairly essential to the overall story.
Qualitatively, In the Name of the King qualifies Uwe Boll as the same level of filmmaker as folks like Digital Playground's Joone, who made some kind of history shooting Pirates, a porno-reinterpretation of the Pirates of the Caribbean films that was eventually re-edited for R-rated release. Obviously, this equates a Hollywood filmmaker with a porn director, and offers a questionable compliment to Boll. In fact, the only difference between Boll and Joone is that Joone actually provides his audience with exactly what it wants - namely lots of nudity and sex - while Boll retains only porn's universe of terrible storytelling, godawful acting and bad special effects.
Ultimately, I am reminded of the refrain often used when critics and viewers outright dismiss a film by saying that the folks involved knew what they were making, or more specifically knew they weren't making a masterpiece: "no one sets out to make a bad movie." This is true - nobody decides that they actively want to create a piece of crap from the get-go, with the possible exception of Tom Green and Freddy Got Fingered. In Uwe Boll's case, I don't think he wants his movies to be bad, but I don't get a confident sense that he cares about making them particularly good, either.
But lest one interpret my introductory praise as misdirection or sleight-of-hand to obscure the remainder of the review's decidedly more critical tone, I'll offer another mild superlative as a way of wrapping things up. Overall, not only is Dungeon Siege the best film of Uwe Boll's career, but it's also guaranteed not to be the worst one released in its year – which, backhanded compliment though it may be, marks an important distinction from every other movie he's made.
