Humans cannot see things in the ultraviolet spectrum.  Ultraviolet, on the other hand, is sadly visible to any unlucky soul who ventures unwittingly into theaters.  Some movies are bad, yet it is still fun to watch and mock them.  Ultraviolet falls below this low standard, scraping the bottom in an attempt to break through towards some new low.  The big question for its star, Milla Jovovich, is "why?"  After taking smaller roles in a wide variety of movies, she became an action star in her own right with Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2:  Apocalypse.  Before she was an actor, she was a model, and is still a spokesman for L'Oreal.  She even released an album a while ago.  So to say she is hard up on money is probably a stretch.  But why in the world would she stoop so low and act in crap like this?

Ultraviolet is a watered down science fiction movie.  It makes the Resident Evil films look masterful, and even Aeon Flux is watchable in comparison.  All four of these films share vaguely similar themes.  There are no original ideas in writer/director Kurt Wimmer, who wrote The Recruit and wrote and directed the surprisingly enjoyable Equilibrium.  Everything here is purely derivative.  Worse is the fact that everything is so damn boring.  Thoroughly improbable action sequences take precedence over a whisper of a story and last forever.  Cheap special effects last for the entire movie, and Wimmer wraps everything up into a snooze-inducing plot.  It's pretty pathetic that the only thing most people will notice is Jovovich's impressively flat stomach, which is on display for the duration of the movie, even though she manages to change clothes multiple times.  Apparently, in the future, there is not enough material for the clothes on really hot women.  Men, yes.  Milla Jovovich, no.

Jovovich is Violet.  She is a Hemophage, which is a genetically altered human.  Normal humans discriminate against the Hemophages, who have superhuman abilities (and flat stomachs!), and want to wipe them out.  Violet goes on a one-woman rampage to kill Daxus (Nick Chinlund, The Legend of Zorro, The Chronicles of Riddick), who hold the key to destroy or save the Hemophages.  Somehow, a young boy named Six (Cameron Bright, Running Scared, Birth) is the key to all this.  Don't worry about why; it doesn't really matter since everything is so mindless.  And it's hard to just sit there and appreciate the look of Ultraviolet because the film looks so ugly.  Many of the CGI shots look like they are rough cuts that need additional editing.  There's an annoying hazy look to much of the film, and many of the backgrounds look extremely fake.

The over-the-top action sequences are just silly.  Most feel like something a twelve-year old though would sound cool, translated to the big screen.  The use of swords in science fiction movies is usually pretty iffy, and here fails miserably.  As does a bunch of human policemen standing in a circle to execute some Hemophages at the beginning of the movie.  Just as dumb is a fight near the end with flaming swords.  One clue may be in the credits, where there are a large number of Asian surnames.  If one thinks about it, Ultraviolet does have the feel of an Asian action movie, especially some of the Hong Kong ones, where fights and stunts seem to take a higher priority than plot.  But this isn't an Asian film, it's an American one, and what is popular in Asian may not be popular here (hint - it's not).