In the Name of the King: Two Worlds

Uwe Boll is the stuff of legends, he's a director so detested that he's become one of those things that is trendy to hate. People slate him and rate his movies without even seeing them and I find that a damn shame.

The trouble with Boll is he doesn't have a style, you watch a Bruckheimer/Bay/Spielberg/Nolan etc film you can tell it's one of theres whereas Boll has no identity beyond his love of adapting video games.

I personally don't think the hatred is justified, yes he's done some stinkers and yes the man himself is a lunatic but he has done some very enjoyable films as well.

In The Name Of The King (2007) wasn't one of them, but it was passable. This sequel however is a cliched mess.

It was doomed from the outset, Lungren turned the roll down and only later changed his mind due to his divorce and financial situation. So immediatly you have a leading man who doesn't want to be there, and was vocal about this fact.

To make matters worse Lungren injured himself on the first day of filming, this is evident throughout the movie as he is barely mobile and has a nasty limp.

The film itself is a highly cliched tale involving a man who is dragged through time and forced to fullfill a prophecy. Yeah, exactly.

The Good:

Natalie Burn & Aleks Paunovic

CGI is better than expected

The Bad:

Script is poor

Stupidly cliched

Lungrens injury is blatant

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Every fantasy movie needs a black forest from which no man has ever made out alive!

Let me begin by saying that I found the first "In the Name of the King" quite entertaining and I gave it a 7 or 8 stars, if I recall correctly, even though it didn't deserve them. This film may not even deserve the three I'm giving it. I'm trying my best to think up of something coherent to say in this film's defence, and I find it quite problematic. Even if we forget about the blatantly obvious car behind the trees in a few medieval scenes, there's still a lot of problems remaining. The acting feels unnatural, events happen for no reason, epic armies consist of ten men on each side. Come on, herr Boll! You did far better with the first one. Yes, the first one was hands-down better. I thought about racking my brains on some of the things and events in the film, but this will mean that I should include spoilers, which I wouldn't really like.

The largest problem however seems to be that the film attempts to be "larger" than it is. It tries to imply that it's grand, while constantly contradicting itself through the points suppiled above.

I really like this film's poster though. Please, dear reader, open a new tab with the picture and analyse it. You see our hero Granger clad in what seems to be full plate armour, holding a longsword heroically. You see a battle of epic proportions happening in the background. You see a fair lady dish out the pain using a hand-and-a-half sword or something like that. You see a dragon that breathes fire with devastating effect. You see that guy with the beard on the left of the sword-maiden (played by Aleks Paunovic) about to stab someone in this conflict of epic proportions. You see a great city, or at least a part of it, in the background. What I really like about this poster is that the film also contradicts each and every single damn thing in it. Not ONE thing is the same as the poster portrays it.

If you're a masochist like I would appear to be (for watching yet another Boll-film), or if you like bad films like I do, go ahead and give it a watch. Else, please go and watch something more entertaining. Your life is more valuable than this film.

To be fair to this movie, it might have had a chance had it been directed and produced by someone else - anyone else - than the now infamous Uwe Boll. Mr Boll can perhaps most accurately be described as a modern-day Ed Wood, and is at best a director whose work produces performances of the finest teak, whose stories have the gravitas and literacy of a MacDonalds burger wrapper, the visual crafting and fine artistic sensibilities of a no parking sign, and whose cinematic inspiration apparently stems solely from bargain bin video games of the 1980s.

If you want to know what this film is like, simply look up Uwe's resume on this website and check out any or all of the titles he has written, directed and produced. They are all pretty much on the same level. How he still draws in investors to any project he is connected to mystifies me completely.

But there is one great thing about Uwe Boll. I know with absolute certainty that if his name is on the credits in any capacity whatsoever, to avoid that film like the plague. Somehow I missed seeing it with this film, my attention being drawn aside by the fact that apparently Jason Statham was in the first In the Name of the King movie. I should pay more attention. Mea culpa.

Thank you.

The first In the Name of the King movie was a bit silly, but not bad as sword and sorcery stuff goes - and Uwe somehow got a whole cast full of real actors to and decent enough effects people to work on it.

This abomination, on the other hand, was so terrible that I, who can usually find some value is just about anything, gave up in disgust after that first half hour or so - life is too short to waste time on stuff this bad.

Even Dolph Lundgren, who can usually do a fair impersonation of a wall, was given absolutely nothing to work with here - and I'd never heard of anybody else in the cast.

Rewatching the original In the Name of the King is a much better use of your time than trying to watch this thing.

"Remember who your meant to be, remember that you must return to this place. It was my prophecy to die for you, it is your destiny to be here." Granger (Lundgren) is an ex-special forces soldier who is now teaching karate to young children. While at home one night he is attacked by a strange being and is somehow transported to a different time. After being told of a prophecy it is up to him to save the strange world that he is now in. I have to admit that I tried to watch the first one a few times and could never make it through (even though I love Statham). This one made the first one look great. Without trying to be too harsh I couldn't tell if the acting was really bad or if it was the writing that made it that way. The fight scenes were this side of High School plays and the story was something that was thought of in a drunken night. All that said no one watches this type of movie for acting or plot anyway. Overall, I couldn't really finish either of these movies but if you liked the first one I think you will like this one too. I did not. I give it a C-.