Rise And Fight
Starring: Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, Matthew Lillard, Ray Liotta, Burt Reynolds, Kristanna Loken, Darren Shahlavi
Director: Uwe Boll
2007 | 127 Minutes | PG-13
“You gonna fight… or talk me to death?” – Farmer
I’ve tried watching In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (what a friggin’ mouthful…) a few different times now. It’s always gotten the better of me before I was able to make it to the conclusion. Doing this review has caused me to confront one of my greatest cinematic adversaries. But does anyone win with a Uwe Boll film viewing?
Farmer (Jason Statham) sets out to rescue his kidnapped wife and avenge the death of his son. To do this he must fight an army of orc-like Krugs and the evil wizard Gallian (Ray Liotta).
In the Name of the King is a medieval fantasy tale but Lord of the Rings this is not. Who in their right mind gave Uwe Boll more than two hours to tell this story? Or any story for that matter? With over an hour remaining in the movie I was looking at the clock thinking we must be close to a final battle. Nope. Still an hour of boredom left.
It’s hard to believe but 2007 would be considered pretty early in Jason Statham’s action movie career. He’d only had starring theatrical releases in Transporter 1 & 2 and the first Crank. He was on his way up but certainly hadn’t arrived quite yet. For that reason I will give him the pass with this role. It’s not that he was horrible in it but I just feel like he should have known better. I’m assuming at this stage in his career he felt like he needed to do just about anything. The multitude of other big name actors don’t have that excuse.
Ray Liotta (with his orange spray-on tan) is a great choice for a big bad guy… not so much for a big medieval bad guy. His New Jersey accent doesn’t quite cut it for a wizard.
John Rhys-Davies lends a lot of class to this production… where it most certainly wasn’t due. I still don’t understand how Boll gets some of these actors to participate in his films.
Per Uwe Boll’s usual M.O. the production values are surprisingly high considering his horrid reputation. That said, the legion of goblin baddies have a certain rubber mask quality to their look. It’s weird. They kinda look pretty good and they kinda look really, really bad.
The lack of blood feels really wrong in a B-Level sword slashing flick. These types of movies should have blood flowing freely to make up for all the other inadequacies. With tons or Krugs getting slashed and stabbed it would have been nice to see some blood spraying to let us know they’re really dead.
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale isn’t quite as bad as I originally thought but there just isn’t any reason anyone should ever see it – unless you are an obsessive completionist like myself. I have to watch every Jason Statham movie so I watch this. I HAVE to watch every Dolph Lundgren movie so I will watch the sequel. Then, since I’m already two movies deep, I will have to watch the threequel starring Dominic Purcell. I hope these things get better…
Action Movie Fanatix 