In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

Rating: T for trainwreck
Important to know: How badass you are is directly related to how short your hair is. Bald is best if you want to survive.
For the Gamer Chicks: In Dungeon Siege Land, women wear no bras. Or is that a point for the Gamer Guys?

I have finally realized what it is about Uwe Boll movies that keeps people watching. It's like he's a kid, and you've caught him in a lie. He thinks maybe you know he's lying, but he's not positive, so he keeps digging the hole and you keep watching, just to see how far he intends to go.

When it comes to In the Name of the King, he goes pretty damn far. This movie is bad. It's jaw-droppingly bad. It makes you wonder if some of the actors in it lost a bet, or perhaps did it as a dare. It's also nearly two solid hours long. There isn't enough material to make it that far, but by some miracle of unnecessary scenes, it does.

Let's call this a plot: In the kingom of Eb (neighbor to Flow and Tide perhaps?) there are Krug (NOT Uruk-Hai, they're shorter) who until recently have been sort of like gorillas, mindless and, seemingly, harmless. Suddenly they're wearing armor, fighting with swords, riding horses and ravaging the countryside. One village is home to Farmer (Jason Statham) and his wife(Claire Forlani) and young son. It's also home to Ron Perlman, wearing some unfortunate hair, and the wife's parents and brother, who stole Orlando Bloom's Lord of the Rings wig. The Krug attack, Farmer makes an Important Discovery that the horse-riding Krug are connected to someone else, and his kid and parents-in-law are ruthlessly murdered. Then his wife it taken hostage, and now our hero has a motivation for the rest of the film.

While the peasants suffer, Lelee Sobieski is making out with Ray Liotta (EW!). He's some sort of evil wizard - you can tell from all the black clothes - and the fact that he commands the Krug, to the point of controlling them by magic in his library. This is, sad to say, a pretty cool special effect. Just to repeat: RAY LIOTTA IS AN EVIL WIZARD. I confess, it's the only reason I watched this movie, he is hilarious, painting all of his usual oily bad buy panache onto this flimsy character.

It takes half the movie to figure out why Sobieski's character is important. It also seems like her usefulness is completely dependent on her attire - if she's wearing pants, she's not irritating and incompetent. If she's in a dress, not only is she nearly falling out of it, she's probably crying and being useless at the same time.

Who's missing? Oh yes, the King of Eb is Burt Reynolds, sounding as if he's speaking every word from the bottom of a glass of gin. He has a court mage, Johnathan Rhys-Davies, looking very slim and tall, but coughing up horrid dialogue. There's also slimy Duke Matthew Lillard, who also sounds constantly drunk, but that is actually part of his character.

Notice that I haven't named anyone? Trust me, it doesn't matter. Half of them don't get names. Along the way we meet our fantasy archetypes: the loyal captain of the guard, the cranky forest people who want the outsiders to get off their damn lawn, and the king's ninjas. Yes, the king has a cadre of six personal ninjas. The very notion was awesome, and they fought well, but don't worry, the film managed to underuse them and ruin a good idea.

Much like catching a child in a lie, watching the movie was like listening to a child tell a story. "And then this happens, and then that happens, and then this happens for no reason at all, and then something else happens that makes no sense..." I wasn't confused, I knew what was going on the whole time, it simply made no sense. One nonsensical event after another, leading to even more foolishness, blatant cribbing from better stories, and obvious "twists."

The end of the movie distressed me because it featured a fight scene I'd actually imagined would be a great deleted scene from the new Star Wars trilogy. When you realize that you actually COULD have written a movie, it's a little depressing.

In the end, you feel bad for the Captain of the Guards. He deserved a better movie.