Fantastic!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Okay, a crap script. Serious problem with that. But some good acting, beautiful sets, nicely shot, good special effects. If you want to see a fantasy movie, and you have seen all the good ones, this is worth a spin. Loads of action. Well choreographed. The trailer movies on the DVD imply you are an idiot man who likes to watch movies for the boobs and violence, which doesn't set the mood, I admit. But there is no exploitation of women in this movie, and some of the women even take up swords. So, okay, this isn't Shakespeare. If fact, prepare thyself for character arcs that are vapid and almost theme-less. It's basically a medieval/supernatural revenge tale. But if you're just looking for a no-brainer fix of non-dragon fantasy and action, especially on a weekend afternoon, you will enjoy this. Jason S. is excellent.

It has been a good long time since I saw a movie as massively, unintentionally cheesy as In the Name of the King. Lured into purchasing it on Blu-Ray as part of a batch offer, I already had my doubts about a film being marketed just on the basis of the lead having been in The Expendables. But seeing Jason Statham's hunky face on the cover made me walk into the trap regardless: I'm just superficial that way. After the purchase, I took better look at the director and saw the name Uwe Boll, in very tiny print. It was then that I knew for sure I'd been had.Uwe Boll is known for his ability to make bad movie adaptations of game franchises, such as Bloodrayne, Alone in the Dark and Far Cry. They are said to be generic and uninteresting at best, hilariously bad at worst. He once famously challenged his unflagging critics to take him on in the ring and settle their score man-to-man, apparently believing he could prove the quality of his work by punching a critic in the face. To be fair, based on his reputation I had always avoided his movies like the plague and had never given him a fair shake. But going by this movie, I should just have taken other people's word for it and spared myself two hours of low-budget mediocrity. The whole project is po-faced, misjudged and wobbly in all aspects from acting and script to special effects. Even the passionless soundtrack conspires to makes things drag.In the Name of the King – a Dungeon Siege Tale is based on a Role- Playing game I know nothing about and stars Jason Statham as Farmer, whose day-job is evident from his name. He has a son and a wife, but not for long, as soon they are both taken from him by the 'Krug', who look suspiciously like Trolls and were probably renamed to sound less generic. The Krug have a silly semi-gorilla walk with corresponding sounds, unconvincing bodysuits and never let you forget that there must be an actor inside, feeling very bad for himself. There is a magical mastermind pulling the Krug's strings (the ever-evil Ray Liotta) and his plan is to take over the land by getting rid of the king (a strangely tightfaced and overly made up Burt Reynolds), with help from the king's weakling nephew (Matthew Lillard, better known as Shaggy from the Scooby Doo movies). Not to spoil anything, but Farmer stops him. The end.I have left out some other characters like a magus/magician (the elsewhere admirable John Rhys-Davies) and Farmer's daddy substitute (the elsewhere fantastic Ron Perlman), but then none of them is especially memorable and they remain firmly 2D, if not 1D. One or two of the minor characters even risk travelling into negative space. It is the script's fault that people don't really say the things that would make the most sense in any given circumstance and that what does come out of their mouth sounds stilted, but since Boll is the producer and director, blame still lands on his plate. Watching the movie, I kept being tempted to reach into my television, yank out the script and do a quick rewrite. I also wanted to rewrite the beginning and get rid of a 'twist' that was probably intended as gritty and shocking, but really is just severely emotionally misjudged. It sets the wrong tone and shows that the makers are in denial about making a goofy fantasy action movie.Even though In the Name of the King is very long and feels like it, somehow it doesn't get around to putting in all the information you need to comprehend what is going on. For instance: there is a baffling group of semi-ninja warriors that just appear in the middle of a battle – on two occasions – without set-up or explanation afterwards. If only Boll had tightened up the story, got rid of some unnecessary characters and scenes, cut out about 30-45 minutes and used the extra budget to invest in a dialogue polish and better special effects… This might have enabled them to make the fight scenes look like more than just a live roleplaying session in the woods. On the other hand, this would probably have meant we would have had to do without the awesomely silly tree-people who swing around on vines and are able to use them to attack people by way of unconvincing computer graphics.It's a mystery how Uwe Boll keeps getting the chance to make more movies. There always seem to be people willing to invest some money in his projects – as a tax write-off, perhaps – and some actors willing to spend time hamming it up and chewing the low-budget scenery. I don't understand why all of the at least somewhat known actors I mentioned didn't take one look at the script and at Boll's reputation and ran in the opposite direction. The sounds of agents getting fired must have been everywhere during and after the filming. Beefcake Statham fulfills the stoic hero part as best as he can, given the circumstances, but is a lot more fun in movies where he has a sense of humor than in flicks like this and The Transporter, where he is typecast as a frowning, one-note action man.To end on a positive note… uhmm… well, I guess some of the computer- generated vistas are actually quite nice and the Blu-Ray picture quality is crisp and clean. That's pretty much all I can come up with.Despite this movie being a massive commercial flop, a sequel starring Dolph Lundgren is in the works, once again directed by Uwe Boll. God(s) help us all.

This may be the worst movie I've seen in several years, so I felt obligated to join in and inform people not to waste ANY time on it. I don't remember why my buddy and I decided to watch this in the first place. I'll admit the stupidity of it all actually made us laugh pretty hard a few times, but that's the only redeeming aspect you can find to this movie. After this one, I've officially concluded that Jason Statham just accepts any movie script you throw at him, cause he should have seen how bad this would be from the start. Uwe Boll is obviously well known for directing some of the worst movies around, which had I known that in the first case I would never have watched it. All the acting in the movie is HORRIBLE, which is surprising since some of the actors have actually been in tons of other movies and done a decent job. Ray Liota's character is dumb. Jason Statham's character name being 'Farmer', doesn't help anything since his acting is very sub par in this as well. Matthew Lillard become my least favorite actor for at least a year after his devastating performance in this movie as Duke Fallow. To go along with the bad acting, this movie couldn't have possibly took much to make since the bad guys known as the "Grug" I believe look like the initial Power Rangers villains from the early nineties. All in all this is an outrageously bad movie that I should not have the misfortune to see for sale on store shelves. Enjoy!

After seeing Uwe Boll whine about not getting his kickstarter money and what a prick he is, I looked him up and came here. I never heard of him or his movies prior to today. I really wanted to hate this movie. I was going to do a whole "forensic accounting" style review talking about how he vaporized 60 million. Oh how I wanted to hate him. Oh, how I loved the comments. The one about how Scooby Doo should have a cameo, and all the ones complaining about every single thing in the movie. I loved the Japanese guy: "I think {Uwe Boll} should get some education from whatever school he goes too and learns and relearns directing techniques to keep people interested in his movies." Oh god, I laughed until I needed oxygen, all that home-spun Japanese decency. I was ready to pile on, and then, get this, I watched the movie.What I saw was a 120-million dollar movie delivered for 60-million. I was amazed. There were some shadows crossing actor's faces, but the cinematography was so good otherwise, I have to believe this was hip and intentional. How neo-postmodern. Decent score, decent acting, good audio, all around pretty good, plot not so hot.I know this movie was a flop. It barely moved the needle the first week, and fell off a cliff the second week. I know that Uwe must have offended some gamer Asperger sensibility, but I'll be darned if I can figure it out. Perhaps he respected women too much. Was he too socially adept? Viewers sure hate him for something. Yeah, it was goofy in places, but I liked it way better than any of the Lord of Rings movies, none of which I have been able to watch beginning-to-end. I try again every few years, maybe its time.Perhaps it was not goofy enough, I mean, maybe with this genre you do have to go full retard and have walking talking trees and flaming hemorrhoids in the sky, like Lord of the Rings. This movie was pretty mild, some particle effects, I thought rather well done. So maybe you have to have wildly implausible things to get a true following, like Scientology or Mormonism. Gosh knows it works for Lord of the Rings, talk about stupid stuff going on. That movie makes gold plates and personal planets look sane.As you can surmise, I am not too fond of this type of movie, so rather than push it into full retard mode, I would scale it back. You have to realize the demographic is not the 13-to-16 year old Howard Stern demo. Its the 8-to-12 Caucasian boy demo. Its a little tougher.Since mom and dad may well be at the theater, lets just take out Ray Liotta. I liked him, despite it looking like he just had a Botox enema, but all this mystic debbel crap will just get the parents looking at each other and going "huh?" Sad fact is that the antagonist goes from the hyena people at the beginning to Liotta at the end. So half the money shots are with Ray. Too bad, now we're in rewrite.Just as well, since the other problem is that 8-year-old Caucasian kids might idolize their brothers, and they still remember momma's breast feeding, but they really don't want to root for dad. So both Burt Reynolds and Statham are father figures in a movie trying to appeal to a demographic that is starting to resent and hate their fathers.OK, easy fix. The weaselly slightly effeminate son of the king--Lillard-- that is the guy the kids want to identify with, not Burt. So switch those two roles. Now the weaselly kid can be the boy regent hero, and Burt can be the evil vizier, like in Aladdin. Now we are right back to Boogey Nights and Burt is in his element. Leave Burt in it, or replace him with Statham, to get mom and dad into the movie. For Statham's character, same deal, instead of his son getting killed by the hyena people, let Statham get killed and have the son be avenger. Now the 8-year-old boy has a reason to watch, and to watch the endless sequels as well. I surf the web while I played the movie so a lot of it made no sense. It seemed like there were the hyena people so it started out like 7 Samuri/Magnificent 7. Then it went kind of Bronson/Walking Tall, which is just fine. But keep it with the hyena people, not Ray Liotta at the end, its too confusing for me, much less 8-year-olds. I loved the Tarzan Girls that dropped out of the trees. I was struck by how artistic and visual it was, while still being dirt cheap to film. Remember, they are not sex-objects to an 8-year-old, so give them bigger breasts to serve as momma reminders.That Ironboy.... ahhh...jethead---- ahhn no, Hellboy, that Hellboy guy was in the movie and he is always great. Not sure who he was or what he was doing, but keep him in for sure. With Liotta out, that should get the time closer to 90 minutes, that is another key thing to fix this.The mom character was way too old-- this is for 8-year-olds so she should be 25 tops. Wasn't the mom in the Stargate franchise? Gosh I love her from there, but sorry, ya gotta work the demo.So, switch Reynolds and Lillard's roles. Switch Statham and Ford's roles. Write out Liotta. Substitute any teen vampire fluff babe for Claire Forlani. (I now realize she is not the Stargate girl, Claudia Black, sorry ladies.) One kid dies from an arrow, the other kid saves his mom and the kingdom, 85 million domestic gross, but the action figures will haul in 40 million easy. Hellboy can be the kid's new daddy, how cool is that?