| Ultraviolet | |
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Promotional film poster |
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| Directed by | Kurt Wimmer |
| Produced by | John Baldecchi Lucas Foster Tony Mark |
| Written by | Kurt Wimmer |
| Starring | Milla Jovovich Cameron Bright Nick Chinlund William Fichtner |
| Music by | Klaus Badelt |
| Cinematography | Arthur Wong Jimmy Wong |
| Editing by | William Yeh |
| Distributed by | Screen Gems |
| Release date(s) | March 3, 2006 |
| Running time | 88 minutes (Theatrical) 94 minutes (Extended) |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30 million |
| Box office | $31,070,211 |
Ultraviolet is a 2006 American science fiction action film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer and produced by Screen Gems. It stars Milla Jovovich as Violet Song and Cameron Bright as Six. It was released in North America on March 3, 2006. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on June 27, 2006.
A novelization of the film was written by Yvonne Navarro, with more back-story and character development. The book differs from the film in a number of ways, including a more ambiguous ending and the removal of some of the more improbable plot twists. An anime movie titled Ultraviolet: Code 044 was released by the Japanese anime satellite television network Animax, and created by Madhouse.[1]
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Ultraviolet takes place in 2078, in the years following a global epidemic that causes vampire-like symptoms, including super-human strength and elongated canines. The infected "hemophages", die within twelve years after being infected. The Archministry, a militant medical group headed by Vice-Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus (Nick Chinlund), took control of the government and began rounding up infected citizens and exterminating them in order to contain the virus.
Having been infected a decade earlier, Violet Song (Milla Jovovich) has become a member of an underground resistance fighting to protect the hemophages from the government. Working with the resistance, Violet steals a weapon that was apparently created to exterminate all hemophages, only to discover that it is a young boy named "Six" (Cameron Bright). Rather than kill the child, Violet flees with the boy, believing that a cure for the disease can be reverse-engineered from the antigens before he dies from them.
She eventually converses with Daxus who tells her that the boy is his son, but she does not believe him. Instead she takes him to her friend Garth, who tells her the boy has no antigens and he has no value to anyone. He also tells her that the boy is radioactive and they can track him easily and he has only 8 hours to live. In the meantime, Nerva reveals to Violet that the antigens in Six's blood are actually deadly to humans. Furthermore, Daxus clarifies that the boy is his clone, his previous claim to her being a ruse to earn her sympathy. Since the hemophages are nearly exterminated, the Archministry intends to engineer a new plague to maintain its power. When he refuses to give her the cure, Violet escapes with Six and lets him spend his last moments at a playground. Daxus arrives and take Six's body for dissection.
Later, however, Violet realizes that Six may not actually be dead. She storms the Archministry and reaches a lab just as Daxus is about to begin the dissection. In the ensuing fight, Daxus reveals that he uses enhancements he gained from an accidental exposure to the hemophage virus to aid in his rise to power. Violet kills Daxus and leaves with Six's body. Six later wakes up, having been immunized by the hemophage virus in Violet's tears. It is theorized that Six's knowledge may be able to create a cure for her and the hemophages.
Production for the film began in early February 2004 and was shot in various cities across China, most notably Hong Kong and Shanghai. Production was finished in late June 2004. The film was shot digitally on high-definition video using a Sony HDW-F900.
In 2005, the film's trailer was leaked on the internet. Director Kurt Wimmer then visited several message boards and demanded all clips be removed in order to keep the film's plot a secret. The online fan community responded well to this, and all the clips were removed from distribution until the theatrical trailer was publicly released in January 2006. It uses "Clubbed to Death (Kurayamino Edition)" by Rob Dougan as the soundtrack[2] as well as "24" by Jem.
Ultraviolet was released in North America on March 3, 2006, with Screen Gems deciding not to screen the film for critics. The film was universally panned by critics, with a freshness of only 9% (7 out of 69 critics gave the film a positive review) on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.[3] The site's critical consensus states the following: "An incomprehensible and forgettable sci-fi thriller, Ultraviolet is inept in every regard." [4]
Critics took issue with some of the film's fight scenes, claiming them to be unrealistic and confusing. Specifically they mention the much-anticipated "Gun Kata 2.0" scene, which expands on the Gun Kata ideas created in Equilibrium. Although the scene is true to the original style, excessive use of CGI and shaky camera movement caused viewers to find the sequence hard to follow.
Criticism has been levelled at Screen Gems, who apparently edited the fight scenes for content and eliminated some of the plotline by cutting more than half an hour from the film (which was later restored in the novelization). Comparisons between a rough cut version from the spring of 2005 and the theatrical cut proved there were missing scenes. The original edit was more focused on Violet's desire for a family and suggested that she was swept up in the resistance rather than the cold operative she appears in the theatrical release, which focused on her imminent death.[5] The unrated DVD restored approximately 7 minutes worth of footage from Wimmer's cut, clocking in at 94 minutes, versus the theatrical release's 87 minutes.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, Milla Jovovich and Kurt Wimmer were not pleased with the PG-rated release print, Jovovich said that she and Wimmer had been locked out of discussions of the film in the editing stages, and had not been allowed to see her own performance, which she felt, might have been improved if she had had some input.[6]
The film grossed US$31,070,211 in worldwide box office totals. The budget for Ultraviolet was estimated at $30 million. Although the film broke-even and slightly beat its budget, it was not successful in the North American market.[7]
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 27, 2006 in North America.[8] The film was not shown in cinemas in Australia due to poor box office response in North America, but instead went directly to DVD in August 2006. There are two versions of the film, an unrated version (94 minutes long) and a PG-13 version (88 minutes long). The North American, European, South American, Hong Kong, Korean Blu-ray is the PG-13 version of the film. However the Japanese Blu-ray contains the Unrated version of the film.[1] The film performed quite well in the DVD market, grossing over $35.1 million in rental sales.[9]
The DVD includes:
The extended DVD version includes additional footage, increasing the running time and adding more to the storyline / plot. In this release there are additional scenes which include:
Some critics pointed out that in the 88 minute cut, it seems (according to the flashback) that Violet's husband was killed in the raid where she was infected with the virus. This may have been the result of bad editing; the studio may have also intented the change since they released their edited version. This directly contradicts the scene from the unrated DVD in which Violet discovers that her husband has remarried, believing her to be dead.
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