He angrily chops wood trying to figure out how his boomerang keeps coming back to him despite defying physics and reason.
Photos courtesy of Netflix
Oh boy, this movie did not turn out to be what I expected at all. I was looking foward to some good old fashioned medieval war movies with crazy kings but they had to bring fantasy into it and make it ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, fantasy can be wielded well, like in the case of the “Lord of The Rings” trilogy. Then there’s “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale” which deserves its abysmal rating of 4 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. It had all the right ingredients for a good action/fantasy film, and it just blew it.
They’re just so majestic.
Inspired by the Dungeon Siege videogames and directed by Uwe Boll, the film follows Farmer (Jason Statham), an orphan who’s made his way toiling in soil under the tutelage of his mentor, Norrick (Ron Pearlman). With a beautiful wife and happy child, Farmer’s life couldn’t be any more perfect. But when an evil magus, Gallian (Ray Liotta), sets his eyes on the throne to the kingdom of Ehb — ruled by King Konreid (Burt Reynolds) — Farmer’s son is killed and his wife is taken prisoner. He sets out on a quest to rescue her, soon discovering that his origins are far more regal than he expected.
It’s so formulaic you could barf this stuff in your sleep. An orphan fulfills his destiny, fights an evil wizard and his discount orcs and restores peace to a kingdom he didn’t originally care about. The movie as a whole is a combination of “Lord of The Rings,” “Harry Potter” and “Eragon” but it lacks the charm or drive of the former two and all the annoying bits of the latter. If the Krugs — discount Orcs crafted out of a lazy costume department — weren’t enough, the unexplained tree amazons with magical powers will make you give up on any hope of reason for the remainder of the film. It seems impossible, but Boll managed to try way too hard and not enough at the same time.
Here we see Rhys-Davies comforting Reynolds who is just as confused as we are.
The most disappointing aspect of this whole mess is the star-studded cast. We know from their earlier films that they’re all good, we’ve seen the proof, but they could have done so much better. Maybe not as much as they’d hoped with an apalling script, but they could have at least tried a litte. The movie is at its most cringeworthy moment during a scene between Reynolds and Matthew Lilliard, who plays an evil inebriated duke. Reynolds under-acts, and Lilliard over-acts. Usually that indicates that the cool and collected one has the upper hand, but in this case, it’s just weird. John Rhys-Davies (best-known as Gimli) makes the best of his role out of the lot as the good magus, Merick. He’s the only character with any weight or stability, and in a story that is constantly throwing curveballs you need someone consistent. By the time the credits roll, Merick is the only character worth caring about.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. Really?
Liotta channels his best emo Liberacci to bring Gallian to life, and it’s way too much. The film opens as he macks on Merick’s daughter, sucking her life force to feed his army of Krug. He personally slaughters Farmer’s son after following him into tall grass. With Solana — Farmer’s wife played by Claire Forlani — in his captivity, he refuses to kill her because, in his own words, he “enjoys her.” He’s unnecessarily creepy, melodramatic and ridculous. But then again, so is the rest of the movie so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
As a lead in this catastrophe, Statham is also consistent but not in the way that you need him to be. He channels “The Transporter” which is great for the never-ending fight scenes, but doesn’t really make sense in a medieval fantasy. It makes no sense that a “simple farmer” is an expert at martial arts, or how he has any inherint leadership skills that everyone around him just seems to accept. We get it. He’s destined for greatness. Do you have to bash us over the head with it? His relationship with Solana is the only saving grace for the character. We see them together for no more than 10 minutes, but they’re adorable. It’s the only time we see farmer show a little love, and the two pull together to make a pretty good team in the end.
“In the Name of the King” is overwhelmingly lacking balance or structure, and for a film this long that should be considered a sin. I recommend taking those two hours and doing something a little more productive, like focusing on your midterms or taking a nap. Only sit through this disappointment if you have the energy and the disposition to enjoy it ironically.
