In a future society, humans are stricken with a deadly new
super virus that turns its victims into Hemophages: people with heightened
senses, super strength, and a thirst for blood--in short, vampires. But unlike
the vampires of lore, who had eternal life, the lifespan of a Hemophage is
a mere fraction of that; just twelve years at best. The healthy human population don’t leave home
without carrying sanitation-wipes to clean everything they touch, as well as
masks over their faces, in order to avoid infection. And as can be expected in a
situation like this, the government clamps down on the infected with all the
paranoid vigor of a dystopian regime, shuffling the infected off to special
camps where they are never heard from again.
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This sort of anti-social behavior on the part of the government causes the
Hemophages to start an underground resistance. Hey, who can blame them? And when the
evil leader of the humans, the Vice Cardinal Daxus (Nick Chinlund), comes up
with a super weapon that will wipe out all the Hemophages, the bloodsuckers
respond by sending Violet (Milla Jovovich), their best
agent/assassin/tight-bodied babe, to go undercover at Bad Guy Central and grab
the weapon from the evil bastards. But once her cover is blown, Violet has to
fight her way out of the complex, taking on entire squads of soldiers all on
her own--and so the mindless video game fun begins. 
Ultraviolet is directed by
Kurt Wimmer as a sort of Matrix meets Tron, where in certain shots the very
cinematography looks like a video game. The action sequences, where the
seemingly invincible Violet takes on literally hundreds of armed soldiers and
thugs by herself with superpowers that would make Superman green with envy, are
very stylish, and well handled. But there’s so many of these scenes, filled with
Violet easily dispatching these faceless minions of evil, that it sort of
becomes boring after a while. It makes one wonder that if only a single
Hemophage is this powerful, then why don’t all of the super-powered Hemophages
simply launch a massive assault against the humans? But if they did that, then
we’d be robbed of the video game thrills of watching a superbabe single-handedly
offing entire armies on her own. 
The DVD comes with
an audio commentary from star Jovovich, as well as the usual ‘making of’
documentary. The unrated, extended cut, which I reviewed, features 7 minutes of
footage not seen in theaters. While Ultraviolet looks great, visually speaking,
it doesn’t really pay too much attention to such details as plot, or even common
sense. And although Jovovich is suitably bad-assed, she lacks the charm and
sympathy that Charlize Theron brought to her role as Aeon Flux. Still, if you’re
looking for a fun second bill movie to play on a "super-SF-babe-double-feature"
night, you can’t go wrong with pairing Ultraviolet with the far more superior
Aeon Flux. --SF