For our first happy foray into the world of Boll, we're going to take a look at the epic In The Name of The King, based loosely on the Dungeon Siege games; but just how bad is it? Hit the jump to find out:
Let's lay our cards on the table. In The Name of The King is a very special kind of trash. Not so much a film as a succession of ideas, concepts and famous names that are set on fire and catapulted at the screen in much the same manner as the Orc rip-offs featured in the film (no, really, that's one of their battle tactics).
It is awesome.
The Stathe himself plays a humble, yet mysterious, farmer, by the name of Farmer (seriously), who, despite all probability, is also a martial arts expert. When an evil army of Orcs - sorry, "Krugs" - murder his son and kidnap his wife (Claire Forlani, remember her?), he determines to head off after them with Ron Perlman and an epically-chinned Boll regular in tow.
You may think they have a long adventure and rescue our heroine, but oh no, that would require Boll to have longer than a thirty-second attention span.
You see, at the same time, we are presented with a tale of palace politics as medieval king Burt Reynolds (yes, Burt Reynolds) struggles with the evil machinations of his snivelling nephew Matthew Lillard, while his Merlin rip-off wizard John Rhys-Davies over protects his feisty daughter who, despite being a complete goody-two-shoes, has decided to shack up with an evil wizard in secret as that's the best form of rebellion she can come up with.
None of this has anything to do with the above plot, until Statham ditches his companions and teams up with the King's army to defeat the dark wizard, after only the briefest protestation about rescuing his imprisoned wife. Oh yeah, and did we mention that the dark wizard is Ray Liotta? Yeah, from Goodfellas. Yes, really!
He also teams up with Kristanna Loken, who Boll has forcefully shoe-horned into the movie so people don't momentarily forget she used to date Michelle Rodriguez (FOR THE LAST TIME, YES, REALLY!!) and realise she couldn't act her way out of a bag made from this film's plot.
By the time the movie has ended, anything you saw in the first half hour is completely forgotten and characters develop a tendency to randomly spout important plot points that have never before been mentioned just at the moment they become relevant.
Far worse is the "Director's Cut". Now, most director's cuts restore the film to the director's original intention without studio interference; not Boll's cut, no. Boll's cut puts every single deleted scene back into the movie, even shoddy, crowd-of-extras, filler footage and inconsequential moments of dialogue... everything... This brings the film to an astounding two and a half hours.
In its defence, much of the acting is good; even some of the no-name bit parts. Brian J White is particularly impressive as a hard-ass general and the wonderfully-named Leelee Sobieski is aesthetically appealing as the jailbait junior wizard mentioned above. Likewise, some of the ideas on show here are actually quite interesting, but then, of course, when you shovel enough faeces onto a wall, some of it's gonna stick...
This, of course, is a heck of a lot of garbage to sift through for anyone but the most attentive of B-movie gourmands, but, for those with a stomach for junk food, this film could be a way to achieve a form of zen-like enlightenment. You've seen Martyrs, right? Something like that.
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