In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale Movie Review

The Bollmeister is back with another piece of bizarre Dadaist entertainment.  It is a film sure to be the centre of future drinking games and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 criticism.  One can only assume that the intended vision of Dungeon Siege was that of Lord of the Rings, which unfortunately makes the entire debacle that much more amusing.  Uwe Boll is known for responding to criticism by threatening violence or uttering profanity; after watching his films, it seems clear why.  He simply doesn’t appear to put enough thought or preparation into his works, utilizing a point-and-shoot technique not dissimilar to the wide-eyed innocence of Ed Wood.  It is perhaps this profane innocence that strangely endears Boll to his harshest critics, who secretly want him to get it together and make something good.

Despite the occasionally inspired production design, there isn’t a great deal of good going on in Dungeon Siege.  It’s a peculiar patchwork of misguided performances, amusing dialogue and incomplete coverage that must have driven the editor insane.  One can only wonder if the actors were asked to step on each others lines and if the abrasive score was added to help the audience know what was going on.  It’s really something that needs to be seen to be believed; acting as kind of a Showgirls without all of the vagina.

A battle between good and evil is brewing.  Evil magus Gallian (Ray Liotta) wants to have the power and influence of King Konreid (Burt Reynolds), who is aided by good magus Merick (John Rhys-Davies).  Gallian acts on this by banging Merick’s comely daughter Muriella (Leelee Sobieski) and making puppets of many minions who ransack the countryside in the name of evil. 

A particularly brutal village slaughter leaves Farmer (Jason Statham) with one less son, and a kidnapped wife (Claire Forlani).  Accompanied by his strapping brother-in-law Bastian (Will Sanderson) and mentor Norick (Ron Perlman), Farmer sets out to find his wife and avenge his son’s death. 

Unsurprisingly, the direction in Dungeon Siege is really quite sloppy.  The shots simply don’t flow together in a cohesive manner; leaving the audience completely disengaged. There are low-shots, high-shots, medium-shots, candid angles, awkward tracking shots, handheld shots, and bizarre jump-cuts, all within single scenes.  This in addition to action sequences that frequently fall slightly out of frame and accidental debris that blocks intended focal points.  Without the constantly blaring score, one would rarely know what the intention of these various scenes were anyways as there are no visual cues or pacing efforts.  The film just drags along with the same inconsistent and cheap aesthetic.

This is exacerbated by often amusing performances.  Burt Reynolds handles his King role the way one would picture a high school drama teacher performing Shakespeare in small town community theatre.  Matthew Lillard appears to have been helped through the shoot with chemical enhancements.  He tosses out random accents and flails about like a meth addict desperate for a fix.  Faring slightly better are Claire Forlani, Leelee Sobieski and John Rhys-Davies, who don’t deliver “good” performances, but don’t embarrass themselves to quite the same degree as everyone else.  One can’t really blame any of the performers for their lackluster takes on their characters, as this is very clearly a paycheque film.

It also must have been difficult for the actors to perform while holding visibly plastic battle gear and fighting rubber demons who accidentally reveal t-shirts when bending over.  Not to mention the amusingly dramatic and often anachronistic dialogue that must have caused some unintentional laughs on set. 

It’s really difficult to find anything positive to say about Dungeon Siege.  There are three or four shots in the movie that really are well framed, demonstrating some abilities in the art direction camp, and the final blowout between Ray Liotta and Jason Statham wasn’t as poorly executed as the rest of the film.  Otherwise, it's a meandering mess.