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    In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    The fantasy genre certainly has its ups and downs. On the one hand, we’ve got epic, multi-award winning sagas like the “Lord of the Rings”. In the other we’ve also got a good amount of laughably bad, shoddily made ones like “Dungeons & Dragons”. Earning itself a likely permanent spot among the worst of is “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”. It’s a film that is not only poorly acted, written and made, but it’s also tedious and excruciating to watch. The story follows a man creatively named Farmer (Jason Statham) whose son is killed by an army of orcs I mean Krugs. His wife is captured so off he goes to rescue her from the creatures and their foul overlord, the evil wizard Gallian (Ray Liotta?! Say it isn’t so!) He gets some assistance from an old friend Norrick (Ron Perlman? Seriously? ) We learn that Gallian is planning on raising an army to overthrow the king of the land (Burt Reynolds) with the help of the king’s snivelling, slimy nephew, Duke Fallow (Matthew Lillard) Time for some sword battles, epic battles in the rain, wizardry, some Ringwraith knock-offs and some silly political backstabbing. Take it away Uwe Boll!

    I’m not going to say that this movie rips off the Lord of the Rings, but there are some elements that are surprisingly similar. We’ve got the dueling wizards, with John Rhys-Davies (who played Gimli in the Peter Jackson films) playing the good counterpart to Gallian, we’ve got the armies of orcs, the elf-like forest creatures, the shadowy horse riders that Gallian uses to command his armies and a couple of scenes here and there. I’m not saying that this is a terrible movie because of these though, I’m saying the movie’s so bad even if it was the first fantasy film you ever saw it you would have a hard time sitting through it.

    First of all, what kind of protagonist are we given? A guy named “Farmer”. Apparently he calls himself that because he believes that a man is whatever he does. Does that mean that if he becomes the mayor of the town he’ll change his name to “Mayor Mayor”? Jason Statham has had his share of bad movies but he’s never been more wooden or less charismatic than here. Even when he’s throwing boomerangs or inexplicably doing karate kicks, you’ll wish the film was following someone else. Singling out Statham isn’t quite fair though because pretty much everyone here comes off as an amateur. Matthew Lillard plays his character way over the top. It’s a wonder the guy hasn’t been thrown in a dungeon under suspicion of every single unsolved murder in the city. Ray Liotta looks absolutely bored in every scene he’s in, but might just be trying to turn invisible so no one notices him. Overall, everyone is trying to get through the cringe-worthy dialogue as best they can but few escape unharmed. I’d give some examples, but the film’s lack of subtitles (an inexcusable sin considering this Dvd was released in 2008) makes it hard to quote.

    I was actually taken aback by how shoddy the action sequences were. Every scene where farmer goes around kicking looks very staged and are not the least bit exciting. Late into the film they explain why our titular character is able to kick so much ass, but until then these Krugs come off as real chumps. A significant amount of them fall down after being kicked in the chest and then never get up and come on, they can’t take down an old guy armed with a pickaxe? Story-wise, it comes off as pretty laughable often. I know it’s for dramatic effect, but I’d like to imagine that the reason there happened to be a wedding going on when the Krugs first attack is that they’re just jerks and wanted to ruin this perfect day by setting the town on fire and killing everyone in sight. Even the special effects aren’t very good. Whenever Farmer throws his boomerang, it’s an obvious computer generated effect and several of the environments looks downright cheap. I’m not talking about the sets, which are decent enough. I’m talking about the wide shots with castles and such.

    To the film’s credit the Krugs and done with practical costumes and while their armour and weapons look cheap, at least they don’t clash with the hapless villagers they’re slaughtering. The elves (or whatever they are called, to my knowledge they were never named in the movie) are played by talented acrobats that do their own stunts. Hurray for faint praise!

    The fact that I had to re-watch part of the film to jog my memory brings me to the film’s biggest flaw: it’s too long and it’s boring. This beast runs at slightly over two hours and there’s just nothing here that will capture your interest. The characters barely have any personalities, the legions of opponents aren’t menacing and their masters are one-dimensional. The battles are edited frenetically, meaning you’re going to have a hard time figuring out who is winning and which character is dying when things get rough. It’s really difficult to explain why the film is boring, but I can easily see people turning this one off before finishing it. It’s Uwe Boll’s shoddy direction that sinks what could have been at the very least a film that’s so-bad-it’s-good into an absolute bore to sit through.

    Not even a reasonably big budget could save the curse of Uwe Boll. “In the Name of the King” proves itself to be a film that is utterly devoid of any fun moments, aside from a few action scenes where you can laugh at them ironically. It’s absolutely terrible and I beg of you to stay away from it. (Theatrical version on Dvd, January 24, 2014)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  28.2.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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