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After a decade in the business, German director Uwe Boll certainly occupies a unique position. On the one hand, he’s been a prolific, self-assured filmmaker who leveraged European film financing laws and licensed video game properties to create a number of low-budget film franchises with multiple installments. On the other hand, he makes really, really bad movies—the kind that have earned him the enmity of scores of genre fans and critics. Unfortunately, his latest endeavor, In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission, only reaffirms his reputation as a purveyor of schlock so hopelessly inept that it’s not even worth hate-watching.
The first film in the series functioned as Boll’s adaptation of the PC game Dungeon Siege, a medieval thriller that flopped so hard that the gamemakers demanded that any reference to their product be removed for the sequel. Seemingly oblivious, Boll forged ahead with a second film, a time-travel thriller about a modern-day soldier sent back in time to fulfill an ancient prophecy. In the Name of the King 3 basically repeats that concept, subbing in an enforcer for the Bulgarian mob named Hazen Kane (Dominic Purcell), whose assignment to kidnap a pair of wealthy heiresses backfires when an amulet worn by one of his victims sends him back in time. Stranded in a vaguely medieval past, Hazen must defeat an evil overlord and return to his own time to right his mistakes.
First, just let me say that there’s nothing inherently wrong with low-budget genre films. There’s a certain charm to filmmakers who love sci-fi or fantasy so much that they just want to play in those worlds—even if they barely have the resources to make a local retail commercial. The joy usually comes from their willingness to stretch the boundaries of good taste or creative common sense in order to make something that will at least be memorable. Uwe Boll is not one of those guys.
In the Name of the King 3 is about as paint-by-the-numbers as you can get. The plot assembles a generic quest story around a handful of participants who can barely be called characters. Purcell glowers and mumbles through every scene, and while the Bulgarian actors surrounding him may be marginally more animated, none of them seem particularly committed to the project. Plot points, such as Kane’s being some kind of chosen warrior, get dropped left and right in favor of poorly-shot action sequences.
Everything about the film seems somewhat half-finished. While some of the Eastern European locations help, the sets and costumes lag far behind some of the better fantasies produced for television. Then there’s a CGI dragon that seems wedged into the story for no other reason than that Boll really wanted a dragon. Smaug the Terrible it most definitely is not.
There’s definitely a place for low-budget and sometimes even downright bad genre cinema. Some of our best directors got started on this kind of thing. A quick-and-dirty medieval thriller like In the Name of the King 3 should be a guilty pleasure rather than a deadly dull slog. The problem is that after ten years of making them, Uwe Boll hasn’t really learned anything about making them better.
Blu-ray Review:
Thanks to the low production values, everything in the film looks drab, and the high-def treatment does nothing to help. If you do happen upon this turkey, there’s a 15-minute making-of featurette that offers some interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. There’s really no point to watching it, but it does help confirm that even Boll knows that he’s barely trying.
