In the Name of the King: Two Worlds

A sequel with only a tenth of the budget of its predecessor obviously doesn't stand a chance in the comparison. Instead of Burt Reynolds as a king facing an army of 1000 Orcs in leather armour, you get some unknown young man as a king with an army of 20 extras in black cotton. The fortress looks like anyone could destroy it on a Monday morning. The dragon shows some professional CGI effects, one rare point that exceeds the expectations. Nevertheless, if you decide to do a fantasy movie when you are forced to make many restrictions, either the story and characters must save the day (like in 'Warrior Angels'), or you make uncompromising, hilarious trash (such as 'Barbarian Queen'). In "Two Worlds", neither of these two possibilities is accomplished, it must be said.

Movies where fantasy heroes are traveling to the modern age (from 'Beastmaster 2' to 'Masters of the Universe') are usually cheesy. They fortunately tried the other way around here and moved a modern day hero to the distant past: Dolph Lundgren. As Granger the Stranger, he has unusual things to worry about, like drinking water probably full of bacteria, and he certainly has no respect for kings and witches. Natassia Malthe gets the funniest part, which must have been a nice change for her after the Bloodrayne stuff: she is a doctor trying to find out more about the medicine of the future. The story is well paced, so the 90 minutes passed quickly, but I was left with a feeling that I didn't quite get what I expected.

By second most boring film I mean it was the longest 90 minutes of my life, the most boring film I've ever seen was a low budget horror movie called NECROSIS, a movie with a pace so slow it actually feels like its standing still.

However, deep in the back of my mind I don't think Dolph Lundgren is very happy with this film, to think the other potential candidates for the lead role were Randy Couture and Steve Austin (Imagine how it would've turned out then.) the film honestly is terrible, Uwe Boll doesn't create scenes that are great to look at, they are dull and are basically just tight close ups of the actors, most of the cast don't even fit their roles, Lochlyn Munro is completely miss cast as the king, I mean I don't have a problem with him as an actor or otherwise but he doesn't work as the king, Natassia Malthe who is a gorgeous woman and a great actress, struggles to say her lines with a straight face but if you hear the stuff she has to say you can't blame her.

The plot itself is actually pretty lousy and slower than a snail, to be more specific if you're familiar with many adventure games where you ask a character a question about something and he or she takes one to two hours to give you the full history of everything than that's how this film really is for a full 62 hours before the first action scene eventually happens.

Overall, the one good thing about it is that its a great alternative to a sleeping pill but otherwise its better to go for something directed by someone other than Uwe Boll, I know making movies is hard but you can only cut a film so much slack.

I loved the first one with Statham, so I had at least some hopes for this one. I was sadly mistaken. While the plot for the movie had a good amount of promise, Dolf's acting and the directors' directing left much to be desired. The unknown supporting cast actually performed their parts fairly, but Dolf plodded through his. Get a much better director, a bigger budget and someone like Liam Neeson to play the lead and this movie could be quite good. If you have a choice between doing the laundry or this, get your clothes cleaned. What cgi there was in the movie was so so. The choice of scenery, or location of the film if you may, was quite nice. I think the worst parts were that Dolf wasn't very heroic, camera was jittery like a hand-held and the plot twists were weak at best.

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.