Video game movies are a mixed blessing. They show that the cinematic day of the nerd is not over, but they sure don\'t help insure that it\'ll stay around. Bloodrayne is no exception to this rule, in fact it takes one of it\'s \"fine\" swords and shoves it right through the hope that someday there will be a good video game movie.
With the Resident Evil movies being the best done movie based game, there is hope. As long as we ignore the fact that a decent amount of people who followed and enjoyed the RE storyline were rather upset about the story of the movies in comparison to the games.
Uwe Boll is the director of this \"could have been good\" vampiric movie. And his qualities shine through as bright as ever.
Kristanna Lokken plays Rayne in this movie, and is therefore the obvious star. She\'s been in at least one movie that almost all of us will know, Terminator 3. Since she was in a big budget movie, she\'s got to be a great actress right? Well, she might be, but in Bloodrayne she comes off as anything but. And the rest of the acting is horribly sub par as well. I use the term \"sub par\" loosely. Most of the time it sounds like everyone is just reading off of giant posterboard cards held just off camera.
Michelle Rodriguez is someone that has shown that she can act, and once again she falls into her tough girl act by playing Katarin. Throughout this movie even her acting seems rather below standards, and she\'s playing her standard issue role.
The other two main characters are Vladimir, played by Michael Madsen, and Sebastian, played by Matthew Davis. Yes, I said Michael Madsen, who is in just about everything. I’m not joking, IMDB listed him in 9 different 2005 productions and with 11 more items in his “upcoming†section. Take a rest Michael, you’ve earned your paycheck already.
Maybe it is the directing, maybe it really is all the actors, but when one who is use to acting, and acting a specific part, rolls off as half done there is something wrong, and it spread itself out to everything.
The storyline if you can call it that is about the head vampire Kagan, played by Ben Kingsley, who is already the most powerful vampire out there but desires more. There are three artifacts that are useable by vampires only throughout the world, and he wants them. Or well, around half way through the movie you see he kind of wants them anyway. These items are absorbed into the vampire and they give them immunities, as far as I could tell from the movie. Such as when someone absorbs the eye, they are no longer burned by water. We are left to wonder what the others do though.
Along the way, word spreads to Kagan’s ear that there is a dhampir (half-vampire) very much alive and out in the world. Seeing as how he “accidentally†took part in making one a very long time ago, he is somewhat interested. Actually the word is worried. Now to me this doesn’t make a lick of sense. The most powerful vampire around is frightened by something that’s around half as strong as a normal vampire, which he is surrounded by. I’ll always wonder why such creatures will freak out at the mentioning of a half-powered half-breed but enlist the regular thing as their janitors and maids.
I guess that’s why I’m not a royal creature of myth and legend.
I’d have to say my biggest gripe was the weapon props. These things are a whole one step higher than you would see on Xena or Hercules (this means their blades were made of metal). In a lot of the posters or pictures you will see pointy swords that don’t look that bad, they are all lies. I feel that running someone down with a TV remote would have a better chance of drawing the red stuff. This might not have been such an issue for me if on all the posters and ads they showed what the real props looked like.
Another thing some of us can complain about is that we never get to see any vampire strength. In a movie based around violence and action, you would expect to see a little of the strength that was suppose to be there.
In the end, this is just another movie that will bring about the end of the nerd-age. Repent while you can, for we know not when the next movie like this will come about.
"BloodRayne" opens January 6, 2006 and is rated R. Action, Fantasy. Directed by Uwe Boll. Written by Guinevere Turner. Starring Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriguez, Kristanna Lokken, Meat Loaf, Billy Zane.
