STUDIO: 20th Century Fox
RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2008
STARRING: Jason Statham, Burt Reynolds, Matthew Lillard, Ron Perlman, Claire Forlani, Leelee Sobieski, Kristanna Loken, Ray Liotta, and John Rhys-Davies
WRITTEN BY: Dan Stroncak and Doug Taylor
DIRECTED BY: Uwe Boll
FEATURES: Deleted and Extended Scenes
Behind-the-Scenes Featurette
Theatrical Trailer

I could start this review with the normal spiel about how Uwe Boll is the worst director in history and how we should all sign that online petition that promises, if they receive one million signatures, that Boll will retire from filmmaking forever - but I’m not going to. Say what you will about the man and the rumored Nazi gold that he uses to fund his films, but here’s the truth of the matter - Uwe Boll DELIVERS. Now, that’s not to say he delivers good or well-made movies. (He doesn’t.) But when you’re watching an Uwe Boll movie, you know that you’re in for a ton of laughs, and I mean that in the most Mystery Science Theater 3000-way possible. While so many other cheap B-movies are just boring and tedious, Boll is somehow able to make his movies consistently hilarious and jaw-droppingly bad throughout. Gather your friends and some wisecracking robots, toss in a DVD of any of Boll’s films from Sanctimony to BloodRayne 2, and believe me, the sarcasm and groans will be flying so fast and furious, you’ll barely have time to breathe. Uwe Boll is a filmmaker whose works really only reach their full potential on DVD, when you can witness the trainwreck frame-by-frame and watch them over and over again, practicing your own stand-up commentary of puns for the next time your pals decide to have a bad movie night.

This all brings us to Boll’s latest DVD extravaganza - the barely theatrically released In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, an unquestionable Lord of the Rings rip-off that’s ostensibly based on a video game. (You’ll notice that the gamemakers didn’t do much to promote their connection to the movie.) Once again, Boll astounds audiences by gathering a halfway respectable cast for such a middling medieval flop. The Transporter’s Jason Statham plays a farmer named Farmer, living in a feudal fantasy world, who tries to eek out a quiet existence with his wife (Forlani), best pal (Perlman), and child. (Although, taking their cue from Statham, shouldn’t they just be named "wife," "best pal," and "child"?) However, evil sorcerer Gallian (a horribly miscast Liotta) is trying to take over the kingdom of King Konreid (a horribly miscast Reynolds) with the help of the king’s nephew (a horribly miscast Lillard), his unwitting mistress (a horribly miscast Sobieski) and his army of krugs (a horribly miscast army of Orc knock-offs). When Gallian and his krugs kidnap Farmer’s family, the man with one name mans-up and leads the king’s army into battle. That’s not much of a plot summary, but honestly, there isn’t much of a plot. I could try to explain the bits where Kristanna Loken shows up as an angry tree-wench or when ninjas show up in the medieval battle scenes for no particular reason, but ten bucks says that Boll would be hard-pressed to explain those parts either. Some critics have called In the Name of the King one of Boll’s better movies, citing his $60 million production budget as a main reason, but I think that the astounding way that Boll completely wastes his generous funding makes this stand as one of the director’s worst yet. He has a better-than-average cast, a healthy FX budget, fights choreographed by House of Flying Daggers' Tony Ching - more than ever, it’s obvious that the problem with In the Name of the King is Boll and Boll alone.

But all complaints about the movie itself aside, the DVD is almost as disappointing. The picture and sound quality are marginally better than normal on a Boll film - the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound performs admirably during the battle scenes - but, as I mentioned, Boll is a director who’s PERFECT for the DVD format and, until now, he’s done a pretty good job of releasing DVDs with enough content to make the MST3K experience even more fun. He normally includes weird featurettes (like BloodRayne’s "My Dinner with Uwe" or House of the Dead’s scantly-clad actress paintball fight), lots of cut scenes, strange extra content (both BloodRayne DVDs have downloadable video games), and, most importantly, commentary tracks by the man himself. Not to exaggerate, but Uwe Boll could teach Shakespeare and Spaulding Gray a thing about the art of the soliloquy. Boll’s commentary tracks are GENIUS, filled with totally random, bizarre insights into the warped mind of a director who believes all of his own hype. Listen to any Uwe commentary track and you might hear him call Tara Reid a "prude," take a cell phone call from Christian Slater, compare himself to David Lynch, call his set designers and hair dressers naughty words, mispronounce a lot of words (our favorite is the way he mangles the word "agenda"), or rip on anyone from Keanu Reeves to Kevin Costner for no particular reason. They’re almost more fun than the movie itself. That being said - In the Name of the King is devoid of almost ANY extra content, which is a big slap in the face to Boll’s DVD fans. There’s no commentary tracks, three meaningless deleted or extended scenes (two are extended, only one is brand-new footage), and a behind-the-scenes featurette that takes the term "behind-the-scenes" WAY too literally. (It’s just non-narrated raw footage that someone shot while standing behind the scenery.) I guess studios are apprehensive to shell out cash for DVD feature when your $60 million movie makes less than $3 million at the domestic box office, but the lack of any special features almost doubly dooms the film to fail on DVD too. Boll has stated online that he’s working on a 2-disc special edition of In the Name of the King, but even the pre-director’s cut version of Alone in the Dark had more content than this disc. You’re normally the king of DVD schauenfreude, Uwe. But this time, you simply didn’t deliver.