Strictly average movie

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

In the kingdom of Ehb, Farmer (Jason Statham) lives peacefully with his wife Solana (Claire Forlani) and son Zeph. They are attacked by Krugs controlled by the magician Gallian (Ray Liotta). Zeph is killed and Solana is captured. With Norick (Ron Perlman) and Bastian, he sets off to rescue Solana. They meet Elora (Kristanna Loken) in the forest. King Konreid (Burt Reynolds) is undermined by his scheming nephew Duke Fallow (Matthew Lillard) who is in league with Gallian. Merick (John Rhys-Davies) is the King's right hand man but his daughter Muriella (Leelee Sobieski) had also been seeing Gallian in secret.I probably gave this an extra point because I actually played the video game. Uwe Boll is a horrible director. This movie has enough money to work. The acting power is there on the screen. Statham is solid. However, this is an Uwe Boll movie. The story is boring. The dialog is horribly clunky. All the royal intrigue is unnecessary. It could have simply be Statham on a quest but that would be too good to be true. There's no way Boll would make anything good.

It has been a good long time since I saw a movie as massively, unintentionally cheesy as In the Name of the King. Lured into purchasing it on Blu-Ray as part of a batch offer, I already had my doubts about a film being marketed just on the basis of the lead having been in The Expendables. But seeing Jason Statham's hunky face on the cover made me walk into the trap regardless: I'm just superficial that way. After the purchase, I took better look at the director and saw the name Uwe Boll, in very tiny print. It was then that I knew for sure I'd been had.Uwe Boll is known for his ability to make bad movie adaptations of game franchises, such as Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and Far Cry. They are said to be generic and uninteresting at best, hilariously bad at worst. He once famously challenged his unflagging critics to take him on in the ring and settle their score man-to-man, apparently believing he could prove the quality of his work by punching a critic in the face. To be fair, based on his reputation I had always avoided his movies like the plague and had never given him a fair shake. But going by this movie, I should just have taken other people's word for it and spared myself two hours of low-budget mediocrity. The whole project is po-faced, misjudged and wobbly in all aspects from acting and script to special effects. Even the passionless soundtrack conspires to makes things drag.In the Name of the King – a Dungeon Siege Tale is based on a Role- Playing game I know nothing about and stars Jason Statham as Farmer, whose day-job is evident from his name. He has a son and a wife, but not for long, as soon they are both taken from him by the 'Krug', who look suspiciously like Trolls and were probably renamed to sound less generic. The Krug have a silly semi-gorilla walk with corresponding sounds, unconvincing bodysuits and never let you forget that there must be an actor inside, feeling very bad for himself. There is a magical mastermind pulling the Krug's strings (the ever-evil Ray Liotta) and his plan is to take over the land by getting rid of the king (a strangely tightfaced and overly made up Burt Reynolds), with help from the king's weakling nephew (Matthew Lillard, better known as Shaggy from the Scooby Doo movies). Not to spoil anything, but Farmer stops him. The end.I have left out some other characters like a magus/magician (the elsewhere admirable John Rhys-Davies) and Farmer's daddy substitute (the elsewhere fantastic Ron Perlman), but then none of them is especially memorable and they remain firmly 2D, if not 1D. One or two of the minor characters even risk travelling into negative space. It is the script's fault that people don't really say the things that would make the most sense in any given circumstance and that what does come out of their mouth sounds stilted, but since Boll is the producer and director, blame still lands on his plate. Watching the movie, I kept being tempted to reach into my television, yank out the script and do a quick rewrite. I also wanted to rewrite the beginning and get rid of a 'twist' that was probably intended as gritty and shocking, but really is just severely emotionally misjudged. It sets the wrong tone and shows that the makers are in denial about making a goofy fantasy action movie.Even though In the Name of the King is very long and feels like it, somehow it doesn't get around to putting in all the information you need to comprehend what is going on. For instance: there is a baffling group of semi-ninja warriors that just appear in the middle of a battle – on two occasions – without set-up or explanation afterwards. If only Boll had tightened up the story, got rid of some unnecessary characters and scenes, cut out about 30-45 minutes and used the extra budget to invest in a dialogue polish and better special effects… This might have enabled them to make the fight scenes look like more than just a live roleplaying session in the woods. On the other hand, this would probably have meant we would have had to do without the awesomely silly tree-people who swing around on vines and are able to use them to attack people by way of unconvincing computer graphics.It's a mystery how Uwe Boll keeps getting the chance to make more movies. There always seem to be people willing to invest some money in his projects – as a tax write-off, perhaps – and some actors willing to spend time hamming it up and chewing the low-budget scenery. I don't understand why all of the at least somewhat known actors I mentioned didn't take one look at the script and at Boll's reputation and ran in the opposite direction. The sounds of agents getting fired must have been everywhere during and after the filming. Beefcake Statham fulfills the stoic hero part as best as he can, given the circumstances, but is a lot more fun in movies where he has a sense of humor than in flicks like this and The Transporter, where he is typecast as a frowning, one-note action man.To end on a positive note… uhmm… well, I guess some of the computer- generated vistas are actually quite nice and the Blu-Ray picture quality is crisp and clean. That's pretty much all I can come up with.Despite this movie being a massive commercial flop, a sequel starring Dolph Lundgren is in the works, once again directed by Uwe Boll. God(s) help us all.

After seeing Uwe Boll whine about not getting his kickstarter money and what a prick he is, I looked him up and came here. I never heard of him or his movies prior to today. I really wanted to hate this movie. I was going to do a whole "forensic accounting" style review talking about how he vaporized 60 million. Oh how I wanted to hate him. Oh, how I loved the comments. The one about how Scooby Doo should have a cameo, and all the ones complaining about every single thing in the movie. I loved the Japanese guy: "I think {Uwe Boll} should get some education from whatever school he goes too and learns and relearns directing techniques to keep people interested in his movies." Oh god, I laughed until I needed oxygen, all that home-spun Japanese decency. I was ready to pile on, and then, get this, I watched the movie.What I saw was a 120-million dollar movie delivered for 60-million. I was amazed. There were some shadows crossing actor's faces, but the cinematography was so good otherwise, I have to believe this was hip and intentional. How neo-postmodern. Decent score, decent acting, good audio, all around pretty good, plot not so hot.I know this movie was a flop. It barely moved the needle the first week, and fell off a cliff the second week. I know that Uwe must have offended some gamer Asperger sensibility, but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Perhaps he respected women too much. Was he too socially adept? Viewers sure hate him for something. Yeah, it was goofy in places, but I liked it way better than any of the Lord of Rings movies, none of which I have been able to watch beginning-to-end. I try again every few years, maybe its time.Perhaps it was not goofy enough, I mean, maybe with this genre you do have to go full retard and have walking talking trees and flaming hemorrhoids in the sky, like Lord of the Rings. This movie was pretty mild, some particle effects, I thought rather well done. So maybe you have to have wildly implausible things to get a true following, like Scientology or Mormonism. Gosh knows it works for Lord of the Rings, talk about stupid stuff going on. That movie makes gold plates and personal planets look sane.As you can surmise, I am not too fond of this type of movie, so rather than push it into full retard mode, I would scale it back. You have to realize the demographic is not the 13-to-16 year old Howard Stern demo. Its the 8-to-12 Caucasian boy demo. Its a little tougher.Since mom and dad may well be at the theater, lets just take out Ray Liotta. I liked him, despite it looking like he just had a Botox enema, but all this mystic debbel crap will just get the parents looking at each other and going "huh?" Sad fact is that the antagonist goes from the hyena people at the beginning to Liotta at the end. So half the money shots are with Ray. Too bad, now we're in rewrite.Just as well, since the other problem is that 8-year-old Caucasian kids might idolize their brothers, and they still remember momma's breast feeding, but they really don't want to root for dad. So both Burt Reynolds and Statham are father figures in a movie trying to appeal to a demographic that is starting to resent and hate their fathers.OK, easy fix. The weaselly slightly effeminate son of the king--Lillard-- that is the guy the kids want to identify with, not Burt. So switch those two roles. Now the weaselly kid can be the boy regent hero, and Burt can be the evil vizier, like in Aladdin. Now we are right back to Boogey Nights and Burt is in his element. Leave Burt in it, or replace him with Statham, to get mom and dad into the movie. For Statham's character, same deal, instead of his son getting killed by the hyena people, let Statham get killed and have the son be avenger. Now the 8-year-old boy has a reason to watch, and to watch the endless sequels as well. I surf the web while I played the movie so a lot of it made no sense. It seemed like there were the hyena people so it started out like 7 Samuri/Magnificent 7. Then it went kind of Bronson/Walking Tall, which is just fine. But keep it with the hyena people, not Ray Liotta at the end, its too confusing for me, much less 8-year-olds. I loved the Tarzan Girls that dropped out of the trees. I was struck by how artistic and visual it was, while still being dirt cheap to film. Remember, they are not sex-objects to an 8-year-old, so give them bigger breasts to serve as momma reminders.That Ironboy.... ahhh...jethead---- ahhn no, Hellboy, that Hellboy guy was in the movie and he is always great. Not sure who he was or what he was doing, but keep him in for sure. With Liotta out, that should get the time closer to 90 minutes, that is another key thing to fix this.The mom character was way too old-- this is for 8-year-olds so she should be 25 tops. Wasn't the mom in the Stargate franchise? Gosh I love her from there, but sorry, ya gotta work the demo.So, switch Reynolds and Lillard's roles. Switch Statham and Ford's roles. Write out Liotta. Substitute any teen vampire fluff babe for Claire Forlani. (I now realize she is not the Stargate girl, Claudia Black, sorry ladies.) One kid dies from an arrow, the other kid saves his mom and the kingdom, 85 million domestic gross, but the action figures will haul in 40 million easy. Hellboy can be the kid's new daddy, how cool is that?

The fantasy genre certainly has its ups and downs. On the one hand, we've got epic, multi-award winning sagas like the "Lord of the Rings". In the other we've also got a good amount of laughably bad, shoddily made ones like "Dungeons & Dragons". Earning itself a likely permanent spot among the worst of is "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale". It's a film that is not only poorly acted, written and made, but it's also tedious and excruciating to watch. The story follows a man creatively named Farmer (Jason Statham) whose son is killed by an army of orcs I mean Krugs. His wife is captured so off he goes to rescue her from the creatures and their foul overlord, the evil wizard Gallian (Ray Liotta?! Say it isn't so!). He gets some assistance from an old friend Norrick (Ron Perlman? Seriously?). We learn that Gallian is planning on raising an army to overthrow the king of the land (Burt Reynolds) with the help of the king's sniveling, slimy nephew, Duke Fallow (Matthew Lillard). Time for some sword battles, epic battles in the rain, wizardry, some Ringwraith knock-offs and some silly political backstabbing. Take it away Uwe Boll! I'm not going to say that this movie rips off the Lord of the Rings, but there are some elements that are surprisingly similar. We've got the dueling wizards, with John Rhys-Davies (who played Gimli in the Peter Jackson films) playing the good counterpart to Gallian, we've got the armies of orcs, the elf-like forest creatures, the shadowy horse riders that Gallian uses to command his armies and a couple of scenes here and there. I'm not saying that this is a terrible movie because of these though, I'm saying the movie's so bad even if it was the first fantasy film you ever saw it you would have a hard time sitting through it.First of all, what kind of protagonist are we given? A guy named "Farmer". Apparently he calls himself that because he believes that a man is whatever he does. Does that mean that if he becomes the mayor of the town he'll change his name to "Mayor Mayor"? Jason Statham has had his share of bad movies but he's never been more wooden or less charismatic than here. Even when he's throwing boomerangs or inexplicably doing karate kicks, you'll wish the film was following someone else. Singling out Statham isn't quite fair though because pretty much everyone here comes off as an amateur. Matthew Lillard plays his character way over the top. It's a wonder the guy hasn't been thrown in a dungeon under suspicion of every single unsolved murder in the city. Ray Liotta looks absolutely bored in every scene he's in, but might just be trying to turn invisible so no one notices him. Overall, everyone is trying to get through the cringe-worthy dialog as best they can but few escape unharmed. I'd give some examples, but the film's lack of subtitles (an inexcusable sin considering this DVD was released in 2008) makes it hard to quote.I was actually taken aback by how shoddy the action sequences were. Every scene where farmer goes around kicking looks very staged and are not the least bit exciting. Late into the film they explain why our titular character is able to kick so much ass, but until then these Krugs come off as real chumps. A significant amount of them fall down after being kicked in the chest and then never get up and come on, they can't take down an old guy armed with a pickax? Story-wise, it comes off as pretty laughable often. I know it's for dramatic effect, but I'd like to imagine that the reason there happened to be a wedding going on when the Krugs first attack is that they're just jerks and wanted to ruin this perfect day by setting the town on fire and killing everyone in sight. Even the special effects aren't very good. Whenever Farmer throws his boomerang, it's an obvious computer generated effect and several of the environments looks downright cheap. I'm not talking about the sets, which are decent enough. I'm talking about the wide shots with castles and such.To the film's credit the Krugs and done with practical costumes and while their armor and weapons look cheap, at least they don't clash with the hapless villagers they're slaughtering. The elves (or whatever they are called, to my knowledge they were never named in the movie) are played by talented acrobats that do their own stunts. Hurray for faint praise! The fact that I had to re-watch part of the film to jog my memory brings me to the film's biggest flaw: it's too long and it's boring. This beast runs at slightly over two hours and there's just nothing here that will capture your interest. The characters barely have any personalities, the legions of opponents aren't menacing and their masters are one-dimensional. The battles are edited frenetically, meaning you're going to have a hard time figuring out who is winning and which character is dying when things get rough. It's really difficult to explain why the film is boring, but I can easily see people turning this one off before finishing it. It's Uwe Boll's shoddy direction that sinks what could have been at the very least a film that's so-bad-it's-good into an absolute bore to sit through.Not even a reasonably big budget could save the curse of Uwe Boll. "In the Name of the King" proves itself to be a film that is utterly devoid of any fun moments, aside from a few action scenes where you can laugh at them ironically. It's absolutely terrible and I beg of you to stay away from it. (Theatrical version on DVD, January 24, 2014)