In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
Review by Jeffery J. Timbrell
Uwe Boll, director of Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead and Bloodrayne is not one of the world’s elite filmmakers, but at least he’s entertaining.
Faced with overwhelming negative reactions to his work, Boll, a former professional fighter, challenged his critics to a boxing match for refusing to acknowledge his talent. How exactly being able to KO a film critic translates into Uwe Boll being a good director is beyond the scope of my simple human logic. Perhaps Boll, being a former boxer, thinks that he needs to pad his record with some gimmie wins over a dozen or so tomato cans, to make up for his noticeable losing streak at the box office?
Speaking of which, that brings us to Uwe Boll’s latest and greatest cinematic offering: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, based on the popular Dungeon Siege video games.
In the Name of the King is an epic fantasy adventure centering around a character named Farmer (Jason Statham of The Transporter) who has his happy home life turned upside when the evil Gallian (Ray Liotta of Goodfellas and Muppets from Space) unleashes an army of Krug across the lands of King Konreid (an absolutely classic performance by Burt Reynolds of Smokey and the Bandit and Boogie Nights). Farmer seeks vengeance on Gallian and is aided by Norick (the criminally underused Ron Pearlman of Hellboy and Blade 2) and Merick (John Rhys-Davies of Lord of the Rings and Sliders) in his epic quest that will change the world and reveal his destiny. Other notable actors include Leelee Sobieski (The Wicker Man), Matthew Lillard (Scooby Doo, Hackers), Claire Forlani (Nightmares & Dreamscapes) and Uwe Boll veteran Kristanna Loken (Bloodrayne, Terminator 3).
All this movie needed was Billy Zane and Roddy Piper and it would have been perfect.
As it stands In the Name of the King is B movie gold. It’s found a nice middle ground between Beastmaster and Deathstalker with a little hint of Legend of Zu, maybe a twitch of Robin Hood, a dash of King Arthur, a sprinkle of Willow and a whole butt load of scenes borrowed from Lord of the Rings. It’s just too bad there’s a PG-13 rating attached to it, because if it had bombastic swearing, naked chicks, orgies and blood squibs I’d be in B critic heaven.
I felt bad for Uwe Boll during the screening of this film, as the audience was howling with laughter during the dramatic dialogue sequences. But really, at least they were having a good time!? And how could they not with Burt Reynolds as King Konreid?! I mean Burt Reynolds makes the entire freaking movie, from top to bottom, whoever decided to cast the guy should be given a flipping Christmas bonus!
Not to underplay the awesome mega-ham that is Ray Liotta. I mean Jeremy Irons can now sleep safely at night knowing that his performance of Profion in the Dungeons & Dragons movie has been over-shadowed by Ray Liotta’s Siegfried and Roy-inspired arch-mage Gallian! Not since Gowan himself strutted his way through A Criminal Mind, has the world seen a villain so positively FABULOUS.
One of the problems facing most films based on video games, is the fact that video games tend to be derivative of movies in the first place. Resident Evil is fun to play because you get to go through all those classic horror movie scenarios; you get to the fight the giant Alligator, face the unstoppable terminator-guy and kill those buggers in Resident Evil 4 who were direct rip offs of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte. Video games attract a huge audience because people like to pretend to be the superhero, or the expert poker player, or the UFC fighter knocking out Chuck Liddel, or the gangster owning the streets, or the anime superfreak who can lay waste to an entire continent with a single sword stroke. The problem is, these are stereotypes and clichés. They’re fun and exciting when you get to play them. When you watch someone else play them, it’s often boring as hell. It would take a very disciplined and patient filmmaker with a lot of ingenuity to successfully translate a video game to the big screen.
Uwe Boll is a spazz. He loves his clichés so much that if he’s going to throw in one, by golly he’ll throw in ten thousand! Alone in the Dark was reduced to something almost completely incomprehensible because of this particular filmmaking quirk. It’s like Boll sees the weakness of these kinds of movies and magnifies it into a heightened level of absurdity. Almost the entire running time of Dungeon Siege is dedicated to showcasing scenes that are lifted wholesale from other movies, along with tons of ridiculous exhibition and more ham than your local butcher’s shop. Sequences that would require boring stuff like characterization are either vastly confusing (See: Burt Reynolds performance) or shed completely in favor of kung fu wizards and knights on wires. So the simple, straight forward fantasy of Dungeon Siege the video game, which was derivative to begin with, is suddenly swimming in adventure and action movie clichés that don’t even belong to it’s genre.
The overall effect is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it is an epic, crack-tastic B flick of note. It features some great fight sequences, intense wackiness usually reserved for WuTang films and a blazing performance that will go down in B movie history.
I know that there are fans of the video game who will be upset by Boll’s interpretation of their digital RPG, (and rightfully so) but if they still insist on watching the movie after seeing the trailers and knowing Uwe’s reputation, I suggest they play my WSFC “In the Name of the King, Drinking Game.”
Every time somebody says the word “Krug” you take a swig.
I guarantee, by the end of this movie, you won’t give a shit about video games, you’ll be going home with a 6 foot tall hooker and all you’ll be able to remember in the morning is that Burt Reynolds is a God among men.
Until next time kiddies, “Wisdom is your Hammer”.
Yeah!
Think about it.
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