bulletproofheeb

Just to get this out of the way: horrendous.  There.  Now you know and I can start writing about this movie.  What may surprise you is that the movie I'm going to talk about is apparently Lord of the Rings. Wasn't that Peter Jackson, you say?  It was.  Until now.

You see, In the Name of the King can be paired up almost perfectly to the Jackson magnum opus, but in a shorter, crappier way.  But I'll get to that after I introduce you to this flick.

Let's start with Ray Liotta since that's where the movie begins.  He's an evil wizard straight off the streets of New York, as his accent lets us know.  He is trying to take down the king and lives in the castles basement.  Really.  The kicker?  He's getting all sexy-sexy with Leelee Sobieski, who happens to be the good wizard's daughter.  Leelee actually tries to do an accent and I don't know if that makes her performance better or worse.  The good wizard is played by none other than John No one tosses a dwarf Rhys-Davies.  His British accent is pretty good.

After they finish getting frisky we pan over to a lovely little place called Hobbiton.  It's not given a name but that's where it is.  I swear.  We see that Jason Statham is really happy with his wife (Claire Forlani), who does her Is she a slow talker or does she function with low level Downs Synndrome? thing.  To be fair, I can't judge her accent because she was raised with a British accent and then spent her early career trying to cover it up making anything she says awkward on either side of the pond.  Oh, and Statham is happy with his child (blond child) who says things like I'm glad he has a family.  I'm glad it's us. so you know bad shit is about to go down.  Seriously, that was a direct quote.  Also Ron Pearlman really wants chicken so you better f'ing give it to him before he eats your head.

At this point I need to warn you that there are many more stars to come.  How do they show up in the Sci-Fi channel Lord of the Rings ripoff?  Apparently Uwe Boll is some sort of secret agent from Germany.  He must have blackmail material on everyone in Hollywood.  That's the only logical explanation.

Where were we?  Oh yes.  The camera whizzes over to a castle that looks suspiciously like Orthanc.  Who is king of this land?  Why, Burt Reynolds of course.
Burt.
Reynolds.
A British king.
Think about it.
Reynolds looks disappointed to be in this movie, wishing for the earlier days of his comeback.  Since he has no child he must watch Matthew Lillard eat.  A lot.  Now that we know Burt Reynolds is jaded but good (because he's bored) and Lillard is going to be the villain (he's greedy!) we can go back to the town.  To Hobbiton!

More establishing shots of a Dark Age era town suspiciously free of disease or hunger of any kind...
Suddenly we hear LOTR battle music and Orcs show up to kill everyone!  Really!  Thank goodness Statham isn't a weasly little hobbit.  No, he's Jason Statham as Dark Ages Jason Statham.  He knows karate and does some awesome flying kicks and ninja chops to kill the Orcs.  You couldn't have expected this because his name is Farmer.  Since he's a farmer.  So what farmer do you know that can kill an army of Orcs with his feet?  So Jason Statham shocks us all by doing ridiculous martial arts.  Wow.  Then he kills some with a sword.  Nice!  Then a boomerang (I shit you not)!  Then a rope!  This guy is badass.  I wonder who else is bad ass in this movie...

Cut to Leelee at the castle, practicing fencing.  They're both using broad swords to fence but whatever.  The king of this ancient British land is Burt Reynolds and the evil Wizard sounds like he's from Newark, NJ.  Logic holds no court here!  You know what this scene needs?  Well so did Uwe Boll.  Matthew Lillard shows up drunk.  One look at his creepy little mustache lets you know how wrong it is.  He has a cat like mouth so with a creepy little 'stache he looks like... well, some kind of mutant cat drunkard.  It's off putting.  Oh, action.  Sorry.

Back to the soccer hooligan riot Orc battle.  We see more fighting and then Statham's son tries to act.  I guess after Star Wars: Episode I Jake Lloyd set up an acting school because lack of talent like this is not inherent in anyone.  It has to be worked at.  The director has pity on us and kills the kid.  Oh, that was a bad thing...

Statham kills The Mouth of Sauron, which is some sort of fake body controlled by Liotta.  He has a bunch so that's great.  Liotta can be killed lots of times and come back.  And he does.  Statham sticks it to the man when Rys-Davies comes around and Statham's all You should totally have protected us and they're all Come join our ninja army and Statham's all like Screw you, I'm gonna take some pals of mine and we're gonna find my wife because she's all hot and I'm all hot and then he does.

Cut to Leelee trying to learn some magic.  I paused the DVD at this point and confirmed that the books she's reading are written in gibberish Hebrew, and then turned upside down.  The secret to magic is flipping a book, Leelee.  Try it.


Stathamg goes walking some more.  He passes through a cursed forrest.  But it's not really cursed.  It's full of hot amazons who trained at Cirque Du Soleil.  They drop down on fake vines and trap him.  For some reason the amazons let him go.  They either hate Orcs too or it's because Statham is looking for a woman to help and they can dig that as ancient feminists.  Girl power!


NOTICE: This is where most of the movie happens.  It's easy to follow but very unmemorable so I'm having trouble with some of the details.  

• Statham has his posse of some blond guy and Pearlman.  
• His wife is set free and then Liotta takes her.  
• There's a lot of plot with Lillard who's a total dick but awesome about it
• HOLY SHIT! The orphaned Statham is really the king's son!
• Statham kicks Lillard in his ego since he's no long heir.

Here's how the big battle goes:

• Terrans from Earth 2 show up
• The camera randomly rolls and pans, making the troops seasick
• 2 Orcs set themselves on fire and hop into a catapult.  One hits a tree, the other knocks a guy off his horse.  Nice strategy.
• More crappy zooming and panning.

And that brings us to the final battle between Statham and Liotta.  The continuity is terrible.  They switch positions between camera cuts.  Sometimes they have weapons.  Sometimes Liotta uses magic books and tries to give Statham papercuts of doom.  Leelee shows up with her dead father's powers and kills Liotta.  Oh yeah, her dad the good wizard was killed by Liotta.  It was funny.  Trust me.

Statham and Forlani are happy agains.  Oh, she pregnant so it's like they didn't even loose that kid in the beginning of the movie.  Yay for all!


On a scale from -5 to +5
I give In the Name of the King a 1.5

It's not good by any means.  Don't get me wrong.  But it's hilarious.  It's a tiny Lord of the Rings and the casting is so ridiculous that it's laugh out loud funny.  Not only that but I think I know why the studios give Uwe Boll money.  Other than the blackmail, he puts a lot of action in his movies.  This means that it's the lowest of the low that a movie can be while still being watchable.  Kinda like Terminator 3.