Rampage: President Down (2016) Review

Time: 112 Minutes
Cast:
Brendan Fletcher as Bill Williamson
Steve Baran as FBI Agent James Molokai
Ryan McDonell as FBI Agent Vincent Jones
Scott Patey as FBI Agent Murray
Crystal Lowe as Crystal
Director: Uwe Boll

Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) is back, alive and well and doing a recon mission around D.C. This time he wants to cause a major population disruption within the USA which result in devastating consequences reverberating throughout the world. His new mission this time to bring down The President of the United States and his Secret Service detail. Bill brings with him all the freak-in havoc and acidity of the previous 2 movies.

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to Rampage 3 recently, however I knew I had to get it over and done with. While I praised the first movie, the second movie lacked any subtlety and seemed more like a self indulgent political exercise by director Uwe Boll. Uwe Boll’s concerningly blatant and ham fisted political commentary series continues into the 3rd movie, to deliver probably my least favourite movie in the trilogy. Outside of Brendan Fletcher’s performance, I really didn’t like any of this movie.

Despite summaries of the movie stating that Bill Williamson is trying to kill the president of the United States (note that the name of the president is omitted, despite other president names not being omitted in the this or the other movies), the president gets killed off very early in the movie. Among the movie focussing on Bill, it also focusses on some FBI agents who are trying to find who killed the president for some reason, and I don’t know why there is so much focus on them. Questionable moral aspects aside (which I’ll get into soon), this movie just feels lazy and boring despite being such a passion project for Uwe Boll. At least there were a lot more going on in the previous Rampage movies. In the first, Bill goes on a shooting rampage and in the second, he takes some people hostage, both had some form of intensity throughout. In this movie, Bill just waits and hides until the third act, there are some pretentious monologues that he does but that’s it. The messages and themes by Uwe Boll once again are incredibly ham fisted. It is just so obnoxiously pretentious and self indulgent, and even at times contradictive. It’s pretty much like the second movie so if you want to know what I mean, read my review of that movie. The one further thing about the message in this movie that’s worth mentioning is the ending. The way it ends the story is quite dark and this is going into spoilers (if you really care about spoilers, skip to the next paragraph) but ultimately, Bill’s long term goal is achieved, and I have to say that it’s a little troubling that I couldn’t tell at the end if Uwe Boll is showing this to be shocking and a cautionary tale or he’s actually all for it. By the end of the movie, I actually felt a little dirty, and that rarely happens with me in movies. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

Brendan Fletcher is again the best part of the movie, really conveying the intensity and emotion that Uwe Boll is trying to get the character to have. This time around, Uwe Boll tries to make him sympathetic by giving him a wife and child and having scenes with him, and while Fletcher once again does a good job at selling it, it’s not enough to make us the audience care about him. Bill Williamson, for all his monologues is a pretty 2 dimensionally written character, and any attempt to develop him is rather sloppy and unconvincing. It’s really Fletcher who makes him somewhat work. Once again I really hope that Brendan Fletcher gets his big break, he deserves it. The aforementioned FBI agents are really bad, really obnoxious, annoying and unlikable. So there’s absolutely no one to root for, at least the second movie had some innocent hostages to try to root for even though they would be killed off inevitably.

The direction by Uwe Boll once again is actually so amateurish. It’s definitely a lot better than the way most of his other movies are directed but it still is incredibly faulty. Especially with some of the use of the cameras, the production design, the editing, everything. Really there aren’t much action scenes until the end, and they are full of slow motion and a rather self indulgent.

Rampage: President Down thankfully is the end of Uwe Boll’s bizarre Rampage trilogy. If you liked the previous Rampage movies, you are likely to get something out of the third movie. Outside of that though, Brendan Fletcher’s performance is really the only redeeming thing. Rampage 3 is self indulgent, boring, lazy and it makes really you feel terrible at the end for watching it. This is the last Rampage movie, and also the last Uwe Boll film and I couldn’t be more relieved.

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Rampage: Capital Punishment (2014) Review

Time: 93 Minutes
Cast:
Brendan Fletcher as Bill Williamson
Lochlyn Munro as Chip Parker
Mike Dopud as Marc
Michaela Mann as Marlene
Director: Uwe Boll

Violent anti-hero Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) has a plan to change the world by exacting vengeance on the rich, and ripping Washington apart. He holds a number of people hostage and uses his captives as his political platform to spread his message and awaken humanity. It’s time to destroy the system, and change won’t happen peacefully.

For some of those who saw Rampage, it was a surprise considering Uwe Boll’s other work, which seemed to be almost all bad. Rampage was a simple, yet effective movie which seemed to get most of its necessary aspects right. It wasn’t great by any means but it was okay for what it set out to do. I also seemed to like the sequel, titled Capital Punishment (the movie I’m currently reviewing) when I first saw it. Thinking back to both movies, it dawned on me that they really weren’t that good, especially the second. No doubt, Uwe Boll is actually trying with the Rampage movies but it’s not really done that well. Some of the elements are praiseworthy, especially Brendan Fletcher’s performance. However overall it ultimately now just feels like a ham fisted speakerphone where Uwe Boll could unload all of his political thoughts, and as a movie it’s really not that good.

Instead of main character Bill Williamson going on a killing spree, Bill now decides to take people hostage. It’s more like a contained thriller in one location than an absolute shoot em up. One of the stand out parts about Capital Punishment is that this movie is incredibly preachy, with tons of monologues by Bill and some of the most blatant political commentary I’ve ever seen in a movie. There is no subtlety whatsoever, it’s a little worryingly the way it’s done. It’s not the actual concept that is wrong, it seems like it could be something controversial but interesting. It’s that the execution is really ham fisted with really no thought put into it, like Uwe Boll recorded all of his drunken rants and ramblings and decided to put it into this movie. While there’s clearly some truth to Bill’s words, the film never takes into account the horrible things he does. We don’t need some guy telling us that what he’s doing is wrong, but there’s something troublesome about how the film perceives him. Having a character like this is very difficult to pull off, you have to show some of his positive aspects, while not trying to glorify his actions. Uwe Boll does not do a good job with that. The ending is also just so convenient and lazy, obviously setting up for another instalment in the series.

Brendan Fletcher as Bill Williamson is once again is the best part of the movie. I really hope he gets a lot of great work, because if there’s anything that the Rampage movies have done, it is that it showed off his talent. All the ham fisted monologues that he has to do, Brendan Fletcher elevates with his performance, which is honestly saying a lot. He is very believable and intense in this role and does very well at it. I can’t remember how the other actors did in their roles but I recall that they didn’t particularly stick out. There’s one person who did feel a little out of place, and that person is Uwe Boll. He does have a small cameo in the movie and he didn’t really fit in with the whole experience. He wasn’t terrible but he was a bit of a distraction, even if it was for a brief moment. It doesn’t help that during one monologue by Fletcher’s character, Boll comments that “he’s right”, shameless to say the least, considering that he wrote the movie. It also just makes the movie unsettling as to how Bill and ‘his’ (totally not Uwe Boll’s) messages are seen, and far from a good way.

One improvement over the previous film is that it does have a smoother direction without too much shaky camera. It does use a ton of slow mo, especially when Bill is shooting people, there are times when someone gets hit and it goes into slow mo, seemingly even more gratatious than the first movie. The production design and the general look of the movie is not much better than the first movie, it does have a very amateurish vibe from it. The music is basic as well.

Whereas the first Rampage at least seemed to be balanced, Capital Punishment increases the monologues written personally by Uwe Boll and becomes a preachfest and it becomes really annoying and self indulgent. There’s pretty much no reason to watch Capital Punishment outside of Brendan Fletcher, who really does deserve better than Uwe Boll. I’m not looking forward to reviewing the third and final Rampage movie but I’ll be glad that it’ll be over.

Rampage (2009) Review

Time: 85 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and offensive language
Cast
Brendan Fletcher as Bill Williamson
Michael Paré as Sheriff Melvoy
Shaun Sipos as Evan Drince
Lynda Boyd as Bill’s Mom
Robert Clarke as Evan’s Father
Director: Uwe Boll

A man, Bill Williamson (Brendan Fletcher) with a thirst for revenge builds a full body armour from Kevlar and goes on a killing spree.

Uwe Boll was often infamously known as one of the worst filmmakers ever to work and get attention, pretty much like Ed Wood or Tommy Wiseau, if none of their films were actually entertainingly bad at all. Despite this, many have said that his Rampage movies were actually really good. I did have some doubts going in but coming out I’ve found that Rampage is a surprisingly decent movie. It does have a few flaws here and there and it really isn’t that great of a movie but it is overall a decent movie that might actually be worth checking out, for those curious enough to give it a shot.

Rampage is a little slow with its buildup, in these moments it shows what drives the protagonist Bill (Brendan Fletcher) to essentially go on a killing rampage. It does get a little too preachy, political and in your face about what Uwe Boll is trying to say, there is little subtlety but it can be overlooked. In these moments, there are also parts taken from later on in the movie that were put in there that really didn’t serve much purpose (maybe just to remind us that he’s going to eventually go on a shooting rampage). Although I felt that they did that a little too much, it seemed to work fine enough. It’s once he dons the Kevlar armour that the movie really picks up. The film is not that complex and a lot of it is following Bill on his rampage but for what Rampage is going for, it succeeds pretty well at it.

If you’ve watched plenty of other Uwe Boll movies, you’ll immediately detect the sudden improvement in acting, it’s like they’re suddenly acting like human beings. I heard that it’s because the actors were allowed to improvise but whatever the case, the acting is okay. Brendan Fletcher was really good and he does well in showing his eventual descent into madness. He was somehow also able to convey his emotion even behind a suit of Kevlar armour. He is quite intimidating and a real powerhouse when he’s on screen. He’s really one of the highlights of the whole film. The supporting cast was also pretty good but it’s mostly Brendan Fletcher’s show, it’s really him who’s the standout.

Uwe Boll’s direction wasn’t anything special but in comparison to the direction in most of his other movies, it’s much better. The cinematography is a little shaky, I could understand the reason for this decision but at the same time, it got a little hard to see what was going on at times. A good thing is that the violence in this movie is well handled, unlike some of Uwe Boll’s movies like Bloodrayne, he doesn’t have an excessive amount of blood. Even though there is a lot of blood, it is played as realistically as much as possible. Rampage does really feel like a low budget movie but it’s effective enough.

Rampage is a surprisingly good movie from Uwe Boll and it’s almost worth checking out. Although the cinematography is shaky at times and there really isn’t much to the movie aside from Brendan Fletcher going on a shooting rampage, the film is decent overall and for an Uwe Boll film that is extremely rare. It’s not a must see movie but if you’re curious enough, I’d say check Rampage out whenever you can.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Tale (2007) Review

Time: 127 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Jason Statham as Farmer
Leelee Sobieski as Muriella
John Rhys-Davies as Merick
Ron Perlman as Norick
Claire Forlani as Solana
Kristanna Loken as Elora
Matthew Lillard as Duke Fallow
Ray Liotta as Gallian
Burt Reynolds as King Konreid
Brian White as Commander Tarish
Mike Dopud as General Backler
Will Sanderson as Basstian
Tania Saulnier as Talwyn
Gabrielle Rose as Delinda
Terence Kelly as Trumaine
Colin Ford as Zeph
Director: Uwe Boll

A farmer (Jason Statham) sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife (Claire Forlani) and avenge the death of his son — two acts committed by the Krugs, a race of animal-warriors who are controlled by the evil Gallian (Ray Liotta).

I wasn’t expecting anything when I was going into this movie, Uwe Boll’s first two Bloodrayne movies caused me to have this feeling. For an Uwe Boll movie though, it isn’t as bad as Bloodrayne 2; the movie does have at times decent action scenes. However this movie still wasn’t good on its own, it still has a bad story, average to terrible acting along with having a lot of things from Lord of the Rings which did bother me from time to time.

The story doesn’t have anything interesting to offer, made worse with the movie being 2 hours long, it should’ve been shorter. The first act was set up poorly with characters that I didn’t feel attached to, not helping this is the dialogue which is poorly written, uninteresting and doesn’t further develop the characters. This may be an aside but Statham’s character is literally called Farmer. The most boring part of the movie was the second act, there wasn’t much going on. The third act was the most entertaining and had a whole lot of action scenes which were done okay but they didn’t have much story to link them together to make them interesting. The film has many plot holes, like in one of the final fights with Jason Statham and Ray Liotta, Liotta doesn’t use his magic at the beginning, despite being able to get rid of him in an instant. This movie also took a lot of things from Lord of the Rings, for example the last big battle scene was very similar to the Helms Deep scene from The Two Towers. Even the Krugs seemed very much like the Orcs. The writer of this movie actually rewrote 80% of the script because it felt too much like Lord of the Rings, it’s not just me finding it familiar.

This film has a good cast, none of whom brings much to the movie. Jason Statham doesn’t make much of an impression here, he’s much better in other movies but I will say that he does well in the action scenes, as he usually does. Ron Perlman gives the best performance in the movie, he’s one of those actors who can bring anything to a movie but unfortunately his character still wasn’t given any depth or attention. Burt Reynolds is for some reason in this movie but he just didn’t bring anything to the movie; he looks like he doesn’t want to be there and is quite underwhelming and boring. On the complete other end from acting bored is Ray Liotta who plays the villain and is completely over the top. If you’ve seen the two Bloodrayne movies, you know that Uwe Boll doesn’t know how to direct actors in playing villains. A prime example is when Liotta shares a scene with Matthew Lillard, it’s like they are competing in a ‘worst performance’ competition.

The action scenes in the first act of the movie are done poorly, the camera shook and cut often and they aren’t filmed well. Later on the action scenes improved, the camera didn’t cut and it was steady, however they weren’t very interesting or entertaining, they were just okay.

I will say that this movie is better than some of Uwe Boll’s other movies but this is still a bad movie. It has the many things that Uwe Boll movies have, bad acting, poor writing, average cinematography and has many plot holes, on top of feeling too much like Lord of the Rings. In short, the movie is a poor man’s Lord of the Rings, it’s the best way to describe it. I heard that Uwe Boll made a good movie, Rampage, I would really like to see it sometime; I need to take a break from his movies.

BloodRayne 2: Deliverance (2007)

Time: 99 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
Natassia Malthe as Rayne
Zack Ward as Billy the Kid
Michael Pare as Pat Garrett
Chris Coppola as Newton Piles
Michael Teigen as Slime Bag Franson
Michael Eklund as The Preacher
Director: Uwe Boll

A hundred years later, the dhampir Rayne (Natassia Malthe) has arrived in the town of Deliverance where a group of vampire cowboys led by Billy the Kid (Zack Ward) have emerged, who is hell-bent on creating his own kingdom. Rayne aligns herself with Pat Garret (Michael Pare), a member of the long-thought-dead Brimstone society, a dishonest preacher (Michael Eklund), and a lowlife named Franson (Michael Teigen) to stop him.

Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne was a terrible movie and I knew that before watching it. Still, nothing could prepare me for how awful its sequel could be. Bloodrayne 2 has bad acting, awful camera work and a plot easily summarised in 3 sentences drawn out to 90 minutes. Although the first movie had some entertaining moments (intentional or not), this movie has none at all.

The story is very drawn out; whereas the first Bloodrayne’s plot flew by really fast, this movie has a straight forward plot that is drawn out to incredible lengths. The dialogue is even worse here than in the previous movie, I swear it’s like a 12 year old tried to write an episode of Deadwood and he threw in some vampires. It also contains probably the worst final lines to a movie I’ve seen so far. After a while I actually figured out that Uwe Boll didn’t really want a Bloodrayne movie, he just wanted a vampire movie set in the wild west; I don’t think that using it as an excuse was the best idea, for example, it doesn’t make much sense for Rayne to have her blades when most of the time she uses guns.

Natassia Malthe replaces Kristanna Loken as Rayne and she did as well as the original actress, which is to say, not very good; however to be fair, none of these actors are given anything to work with. Zack Ward plays Billy the Kid, who’s a vampire and he’s not good either and he may be worse as a villain than Ben Kingsley in the first movie, topping it off with a strange unidentifiable accent. Chris Coppola plays a reporter and he was very annoying, he just made me wish that his character would be killed off. The acting was pretty much the same from everyone. The only over the top acting was in the first scene of Michael Eklund playing a preacher, that scene was hilarious, if only for how over the top he went, it makes Meat Loaf from the first movie look subtle. Unfortunately that’s the only hilarious acting moment; none of these actors leave an impression on you.

The cinematography is very clunky; it looks like the camera man forgot to use a tripod as the camera was shaky, even in steady shots. Whereas the previous movie had buckets of blood that were very over the top, the blood has been reduced; although it at first sounds like Uwe Boll made the right call in reducing it, the first movie’s gore at least entertained. The action scenes aren’t good, and there are even less of them than in the first movie; it’s a shame because even if this was a bad movie, it could’ve been a bit entertaining, like the first movie from time to time. Even the locations were bad, throughout the movie; the weather keeps also kept changing, one moment it’s desert, next moment it’s snowy, you can clearly see that this was shot in Canada.

This movie makes Bloodrayne actually look good, at least it had entertaining moments. This movie was just completely dull, with no redeeming qualities. In retrospect of my Bloodrayne review, there are actually some ‘so bad it’s good’ moments and if you look at the movie at a certain way, it can be entertaining. It’s not the same here, it’s just a bore.

BloodRayne (2005)

Time: 95 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and sex scenes
Cast:
Kristanna Loken as Rayne
Michael Madsen as Vladimir
Matthew Davis as Sebastian
Michelle Rodriguez as Katarin
Ben Kingsley as Kagan
Director: Uwe Boll

Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a half-human half-vampire Dhampir out for revenge for the king of the vampires Kagan (Ben Kingsley) who killed her mother. In her journey she meets Vladimir (Michael Madsen) and Sebastian (Matthew Davis), the leaders of the fortress of vampire hunters Brimstone, and joins their society to face the forces of Kagan.

Uwe Boll has been called one of the worst filmmakers of all time; because Bloodrayne was on TV I decided to check it out, and I’m now paying the consequences. It has wooden acting, a shallow, uninteresting plot, and poorly done action scenes. I haven’t played the video game it’s based on but I feel sorry for the fans who were subjected to this abysmal adaptation.

The plot goes so fast it’s hard to understand what’s going on. We also don’t know anything about these characters so we can’t really care for them; they make the characters from The Happening look like the Guardians of the Galaxy. The dialogue is not used well; it is either used for backstories, moving the plot, or exposition. The movie doesn’t even say what time period it’s in or where it is set. The film also has some odd ideas such as having normal water hurt vampires; here they are like the aliens from Signs. The last scene is a montage of whenever blood has been spilt and is nearly 4 minutes long; it comes out of nowhere and doesn’t make any sense in any form of context. Surprisingly, the screenplay was written by Guinevere Turner, who previously wrote the screenplay to American Psycho. It turns out that Uwe Boll demanded that she handed in a rough copy of the script and that he went with that version, so that explains a lot of the problems.

Kristanna Loken was quite wooden here and barely showed more emotion than the T-X in Terminator 3. Michelle Rodriguez doesn’t give that good of a performance either, however she does seem like she’s trying to give a good performance. A stand out bad performance is from Michael Madsen, who doesn’t show any emotion throughout the movie and looks drunk (which he was) and bored; even when he’s fighting people, he doesn’t change his expression. There is a major thing that happens to him near the end which I won’t spoil (in case some of you actually want to see this movie) but he doesn’t even change his expression for that. He really looks like he doesn’t care, just look at this image down below, he’s not even holding his sword right.

Billy Zane is only in a few scenes in this movie and doesn’t make any impact on the plot. Ben Kingsley plays the villain and most of his scenes are very short, barely lasting for 30 seconds; his performance is unfortunately phoned in, which is a shame. I won’t even go into the hammy performance from Meat Loaf as he was only in one scene.

The action scenes are not done that well; there is a fight between Rayne and a big monster; there were so many cuts in that scene that I wonder how much of the footage was cut at just the right moment. The blood in this movie is so exaggerated that Quentin Tarantino would probably roll his eyes at it. There is one moment where a guy is cut in half at the waist but if you slow it down, you can clearly see his real legs behind some fake legs. The costumes are also questionable, particularly Rayne’s, one has to ask what type of person would wear that in any time period.

Bloodrayne is a terrible movie; it’s not a so-bad-it’s-good sort of bad movie, it’s just boring. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to watch this movie (then again if you already know about Uwe Boll you probably weren’t even thinking about doing that) as there’s nothing enjoyable about it unless you are someone like me who wanted to make fun of it.