B Plus Movies

The “Unrated Edition” or “Director’s Cut” used to be a movie geek holy grail, extending the joy brought by a particular movie or more often including some tidbit that made you say “I knew there was more to that”. Now, the “Unrated Edition” means they throw in a scene or two that should have been left out and sell you a second copy. Every once in a while, though, you find one that splices back in a few bits that takes a movie to another level, restoring actual plot points and story back from the cutting room floor.

That’s what I found in unrated edition of Ultraviolet.

I will not attempt to hide that this movie is mostly and excuse for Milla Jovovich to walk about in tight clothes and kill things in eye pleasing fashion. This isn’t to say that there isn’t a story, it’s just kind of convoluted: Milla’s character, Violet, is afflicted with a disease that mimics some external aspects of classic vampirism. The people suffering this, called Hemophages, get longer teeth, a sensitivity (though not flesh burning allergy) to sunlight plus heightened strength, reflexes and senses. Hemophages are feared, shunned and marginalized in society. An organization called the Arch Ministry (something like the SS crossed with the CDC) is in the process of rounding up and eliminating the diseased. But the vampires have formed a resistance.

One part of this resistance effort involves stealing something from their enemies. Enter Violet again who is more than bad ass enough to enter into the Arch Ministry and swipe the item right from under their noses. She does so, but it all goes bad when it turns out that the thing she stole was a little boy.

After this, a lot of bullets get fired and a lot of people get sliced with swords.

All this you will get with the theatrical version; the reason to go to the unrated edition is that what got left on the cutting room floor for this movie was some initial plot establishment and the mention that the reason it’s bad to be a hemophage is it shortens your lifespan dramatically. There’s no extra violence or shots of Mila’s naked behind (the one in the theatrical cut is nice enough on it’s own, thank you) but there is a fair bit of dialogue that makes the movie make far more sense.

Even with the extra depth, the director’s cut still has some of the same issues as the theatrical cut.  The opening voiceover is kind of lame. Also, there are a lot of techobabble you have to be willing to overlook in Ultraviolet to fully enjoy it: The Hemophages have access to technology that allows them to walk on walls and carry around a metric buttload of weaponry loaded into “flatspace” braclets,  which for no reason is specific to them and is miles ahead of anything else in society. The disease itself seems more of a plot device than a threat.

If you can look past these, I think you’ll find an enjoyable popcorn flick with some good one liners underneath.

Ultraviolet was directed by Kurt Wimmer who also directed B+ favorite Equilibrium. I’ve read in places that the studio took the movie away from him at one point and that what we see on the screen isn’t exactly his vision. Whether that means it came out the better or the worse for it, I’m not sure. The theatrical verison of Ultraviolet gets a C from me, but the unrated edition bumps up to a B. I’m sad I can’t give either a B+, but still I recommend this movie to anyone who is a fan of flying bullets and comic book brawls.

And for that matter, anyone who’s a fan of Milla Jovovich’s butt. And isn’t that something we can all get behind?

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