ULTRAVIOLET (2006)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological, sociological*    

Not only was ULTRAVIOLET a massive flop in 2006, the film seemed (according to Wiki) to inspire loathing in some critics. It's hard to see why. At worst, it's a derivative hyperkinetic thriller set in a fantasy-future, in which the titular heroine seeks to overthrow a corrupt regime. Just as star Milla Jovovich did in her successful RESIDENT EVIL movies, her superwoman mows down huge numbers of villainous minions in the approved video-game style. Writer-director Kurt Wimmer doesn't come up with any bold new directions, but his story isn't bereft of interesting elements either.

Evil government researchers-- one of whom is the movie's main villain-- sought to convert a dormant virus into the viral equivalent of a "super-soldier serum." Instead, those infected did become stronger and faster than ordinary humans, but with a much-reduced life expectancy. I don't know why that prevented the Evil Government from still using the virus to create short-lived super-soldiers, but that whole idea gets dropped. Instead the government, headed by "Vice Cardinal" Daxus (Nick Chinlund) decides to "disappear" all the afflicted people, called "hemophages" because they have fang-like teeth, though they are in no way dependent upon drinking blood. Some hemophages escape the draconian roundup and organize into resistance cells. One of the foremost agents of this resistance is Violet (Jovovich), and throughout the film she shows a marked penchant for breaking into heavily guarded installations, shooting it out with dozens of guards (unless she uses her katana-sword instead), and getting clean away. Her only backstory is that before being infected Violet was a young would-be mother, and she lost her child because of the disease the evil government unleashed.

 However, quicker than you can say "maternal surrogate" (which the script actually puts into words late in the film), Violet's raid on one installation saddles her with a young boy named Six. Violet acquired the boy in the belief that he was a test-subject whose blood might contain an antigen for the hemophage disease. However, when this proves not to be the case, the heroine's fellow hemophages decide to terminate the child. So kind-hearted Violet goes on the run with Six, despite the fact that Daxus himself appeals to her, telling Violet that Six is the fruit of his loins.         

Violet's problems mount as some of the hemophages ally themselves to Daxus, trying to swipe Six from her. There's no explicit reason why Violet should be all that much stronger and faster than her fellow victims, except that Wimmer seems to be in love with the sword-fu and gun-fu seen in John Woo's 1990s action-films. Violet has a handful of scenes trying to relate to the confused boy, but Wimmer's main concern with having the heroine fight her way to a final confrontation with Daxus, who has two "big reveals," neither all that interesting. On the plus side, all the violent battles are nicely choreographed, and Jovovich does her best to give her simple character some humanity.

ULTRAVIOLET's most interesting quality, though, may be its prescience. I never encountered very many sci-fi futures in which a tyranny was built upon the government's manipulation of an infectious disease, so I have the impression that Wimmer's story somewhat anticipates the real-life manipulations seen in the real world after the Covid pandemic. While I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I have no doubt that a lot of companies and government agencies profited from the chaos, and that's what ULTRAVIOLET shows, fourteen years before the consequences of a real-life "lab leak."