Ultraviolet

This movie hopes that it can distract you from its failure of imagination with the following:

• Throbbing techno club music-style soundtrack

• Sleek, towering futuristic structures

• The toned body of star Milla Jovovich, magnificently displayed in a variety of skin-tight, midriff-baring outfits. She can change the color of her catsuits and hair, too.

• Lots and lots and lots of shooting, kicking, swordfights, and explosions

But all of that can’t hide:

• Cardboard dialogue that compounds its failures with a lot of repetition for emphasis and faux-seriousness. “It’s just the wind. Just — the wind.”

• An unintelligible story line

• Dreary performances by everyone in the cast except for William Fichtner as a kind-hearted scientist

• A boring bad guy. In fact, a couple of all but indistinguishable boring bad guys.

• You know all those fight scenes? Not very exciting, at its best a poor imitation of better movies

Milla Jovovich (the Resident Evil) series plays Ultraviolet, who isn’t kidding when she introduces the story by saying “I was born into a world you may not understand.” It isn’t that it is so complicated; it’s just not interesting enough to pay attention to. She’s a mutant and a part of a rebel group fighting the tyranny of the humans. She infiltrates their compound to pick up what looks like a boogie board-shaped briefcase containing some highly destructive biological agent and is told it will self-destruct if she tries to open it.

So, she opens it. And inside is a child. When she gets back to the rebel stronghold, they decide to kill the child, whose blood contains some, I don’t know, bad stuff of some kind. But Ultraviolet, whose pregnancy was terminated 12 years earlier when she became infected with the mutating pathogen, finds her maternal instincts taking over and she and the boy, whose name is Six (Cameron Bright, continuing a string of awful movies after Godsend and Birth) are soon on the run.

Inevitably, we have the 2/3 of the way through moment of peace and safety that shows up in most action films for all the characters to catch their breath, bond, and show their softer sides. Meanwhile, the bad guys stride through spotless corriders in buildings where weirdly calm disembodied female voices say things like “Switching to emergency backup lighting system.”

If only I could have found the button for the emergency back-up better movie system.

Parents should know that the film has non-stop action violence with a lot of shooting, stabbing, and kicking. Many characters are killed and a child is in peril and apparently doomed. Characters use brief strong language and there is brief non-sexual nudity and some barfing.

Families who see this movie should talk about the risks of bio-terrorism. Why does Violet decide to protect Six?

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Blade Runner and The Matrix and Jovovich’s The Fifth Element (all with some mature material).