Review: Far Cry

Til Schweiger is a hard-drinking former Special Forces guy who now earns a modest quid as a boat captain who ferries whale watchers around. He reluctantly agrees to take reporter Emmanuelle Vaugier on a mission to a remote island that harbours a mad scientist (Udo Kier) and some genetically-engineered super soldiers, including Vaugier’s uncle Ralf Moeller. Craig Fairbrass and Natalia Avelon play henchmen of differing moral codes, the late Don S. Davis plays a General and genre veteran (and sadly, Uwe Boll regular) Michael Paré has a small role too.

This 2008 film gets marginally better reviews than most films from uber-hack Uwe Boll (“House of the Dead”, “Alone in the Dark”, “BloodRayne”, “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale”), but excuse me for not doing cartwheels here. It’s still pretty crummy, and in fact, I think “BloodRayne” is better. The funny thing is, it’s not entirely Boll’s fault this time, he’s let down by a bland and plagiaristic script and poor cinematography.

There can be little doubt that the script really isn’t very good. The set-up, for instance, is way too long and complicated. The characters played by Udo Kier and Til Schweiger appear together in opening scenes and then have a separate scene each following this, that tell much the same story in those first scenes. So were all of these scenes even necessary? It seems like redundant, overlong storytelling to me. But mostly the story is just...blah. There’s little of interest going on, and little that wasn’t already said and done in “Universal Soldier”. I liked “Universal Soldier”, but there’s something weird about a hack filmmaker (Boll) ripping off a film by another hack filmmaker (Roland Emmerich). That said, Emmerich’s films often make lots of money, whilst Boll’s films only return just enough profit for him to make another video game adaptation. Emmerich’s films are also usually a lot of fun, Boll’s are tolerable at best. Hell, this one isn’t even half as entertainingly violent as “Universal Soldier” or “Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning”. The characters just aren’t interesting, I couldn’t care less about them, and given the story holds no interest either, it was hard for me to get excited at all.

Cinematographer Mathias Neumann (Boll’s previous “Postal” and “Seed”) lets Boll down by his inability to properly light this film. It’s way too dark in most scenes. That’s a shame because it would have looked good if it weren’t so dark. The daylight scenes definitely suggest this and are the best-looking in the film. Yes, Boll does a competent job here and I want to commend him for finally not being the problem...but I can’t be bothered giving him much credit. I will say, though, that he has a little bit of Roger Corman in him, as this film looks slightly better than its budget probably should have rendered it. The explosions are fake, but believe me, I’ve seen worse, and Boll shows signs of trying to dress this up a bit. Speaking of Corman, I’m surprised Boll didn’t try a little deceptive marketing and sell this film as ‘Starring that guy from “Universal Soldier”’, which would be deceptive on two fronts as Moeller, who appears in both films, is not the star of either films. But trust me, I’ve seen movie posters tell such lies before, so it wouldn’t have surprised me at all. Schweiger and Kier are OK and far from the worst English-speakers in the world. In fact, the worst performance comes from dominatrix-like bad girl Avelon. But I’m a sucker for bad girls, so I can’t be too harsh on her.

I guess it’s more consistent than “In the Name of the King” and certainly more competent than “House of the Dead”, but it’s also dull and uninvolving. Scripted by Michael Roesch, Peter Scheerer (who both worked on “House of the Dead 2” and Boll’s “Alone in the Dark”), and Masaji Takei (“BloodRayne 2”), this is neither the filmmakers best nor worst film to date.

Rating: C