In the Name of the King: Two Worlds

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.

It amazes me that people are still giving this guy money to make movies. He has yet again demonstrated that he should never ever ever make another movie again. The story was probably one of the worst ideas he has had yet. After the last movie with a great cast being, yet another, total let down I didn't have high expectations on this one. Even with the extremely low expectations I had going in to this one it was worse than I could possibly imagine. The acting was mediocre, and the overall plot was not interesting at all. I was ashamed that Dolf even took the part in this movie.

Save your money and don't bother with this.

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!

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.