Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40k Movie (2010)

Regular readers of this blog (are there any of you out there?) may recall that earlier this year I covered an animated film called "Starship Troopers: Invasion," and while I didn't find it to be that great, I did enjoy myself enough to consider it reasonably worth it. I bring it up because I do, on occasion, enjoy those little right-to-the-point, no frills, straight-to-DVD, niche films that exist as more of a tie-in than an actual stand alone film. They're seldom anything worth getting overly excited over, but they can serve as a fun use of 75 minutes. And sometimes you just want to unwind after work without thinking about anything too hard. Just grab a drink and watch stuff explode. Sounds fun.

I was a fan of Warhammer 40,000 from back in the day, although I was more of a collector than a player, since I didn't know anyone else who played. I just painted my Blood Angel Space Marines in glorious red and had them proudly in formation on a desk somewhere. Aside from the cool look of the models, I also enjoyed the dark and bleak setting of 40k, with the constant struggle against nearly hopeless odds and never-ending conflict. It was really grim and brutal, and the middle-schooler version of me ate it up.

Pictured above - Many of my dollars and many, MANY of my childhood hours.

So yeah I'm going to watch "Ultramarines." It's been a long time since I was into 40k, but I remember enough about it to swing with an animated movie about Space Marines. After all those were my boys, even though I was more into the more flawed Blood Angels or Dark Angels instead of the Ultramarines, whom I always found too perfect and uppity. But that's nerdiness that you wouldn't know unless you're into 40k. Although to be honest some of that nerdiness would come in handy if you really wanted a firm grasp of what's going on in this film.

While it's true that "Ultramarines" isn't going to play nice with anyone who isn't at least passingly familiar with the setting, it doesn't alienate the viewer too much if they aren't. You may not know exactly why things are happening, but there will at the very least be an understanding of what is going on. You may not know why that guy just turned into a demon, or why that medic is ripping organs out of dead soldiers, or why that stupid book is so important, or what or who the heck Macragge is, but at the end of the day everyone can understand a monster getting a chainsword to the face.

It's the universal language.

The story concerns a squad of Ultramarines, both veterans and rookies, who drop onto a planet to secure a holy relic which has come under threat. Our main character, Proteus (Sean Pertwee) is a newly made Ultramarine who is perhaps a bit too eager for combat, much to the chagrin of his superiors, notably Pythol (Donald Sumpter) and Captain Severus (Terence Stamp). After things predictably turn sour, Proteus is placed in a position of command, and eventually finds that the fate of the entire Ultramarines homeworld of Macragge is in his hands.

Unlike "Starship Troopers: Invasion," "Ultramarines" takes its time in establishing characters and building up suspense before simply throwing the viewer into the middle of a warzone, guns blazing and chests thumping. How effective the suspense is might be debatable, in fact I think it spends a bit too much of its short run-time doing it since the action doesn't start until the halfway point, but it's nice to see "Ultramarines" take itself seriously from a film-making perspective, and not relegate itself to being just a clip show of bullets slamming into things.

Does this guy have like a 4-foot shoulder span? How is he fitting in there?

However, like "Starship Troopers: Invasion," "Ultramarines" does suffer from the similar problem of interchangeable characters and confusion as to who is talking or who just died. On the up side, "Ultramarines" has FAR fewer characters to follow, and they take their helmets off fairly regularly. On the down side, the voice actors are all older, gruff sounding men, and once the helmets come off they all pretty much look the same. So it's a mixed bag, but at least Terrence Stamp, Donald Sumpter and Sean Pertwee all have pretty recognizable voices. And of course when the great John Hurt shows up you know exactly who it is talking, which is a good thing.

You know, my favorite thing about this movie is the cast. There's some prestige involved here, and nobody slums it because they're not in front of a camera. Everyone here gives it their best. Sean Pertwee and John Hurt are two actors I really like, and they were in two of my favorite sci-fi horror films of all time ("Event Horizon" and "Alien," respectively), but we've even got some "Game of Thrones" action going on with Donald Sumpter, who played Maester Luwin. And of course Terrence Stamp needs little introduction. I mean, come on. It's Terrence Stamp.

"KNEEL BEFORE SEVERUS!!!"

The most negative thing I can say about "Ultramarines" is that while the animation can be good and moody on occasion, overall it's nothing to be impressed by. The characters have little weight to them, and they kind of look like they're just bouncing or floating around the environments. It's not the worst I've seen, but overall it looks circa PS2 graphics. I'm pretty sure I saw more convincing facial capture in "Time Splitters 3." On the plus side, there is a lot of things done with camera angles and depth of field that take away from a lot of those shortcomings, and makes it look less like a really long video game cut-scene. Although it's hard to not get that impression. Even so, in it's defense, it would be a pretty good cut-scene.

So I don't regret spending 75 minutes watching this. It was a fun little diversion. And you know what? If anything this film made me want to pick up a Warhammer 40k novel or something to get into that universe again. I guess in that respect I can call it a success.

Check out this surprisingly solid trailer for "Ultramarines."

THE BOTTOM - Do you like Warhammer 40k? Then you'll probably dig this. It won't blow your mind, but there's a good chance you'll have fun. Do you have no idea what Warhammer 40k is? Enjoy the strange old men in big armor suits killing things then, because that's probably all you'll get out of it. But you might still have an alright time. Maybe. (Although the odds will be stacked against you.)

Black Death (2010)

There's something really fun for me about really dark, gritty medieval films, especially when they have a twist of the supernatural to them. The setting lends itself to some fantastic creepy visuals, what with the fog rolling in through dark, dense forests and bogs so nasty looking you can almost smell them. I guess being a fan of D&D makes my imagination go into overdrive when watching films like that, which is why I love stuff like "The 13th Warrior," "Season of The Witch," and "Beowulf."

I even own a bunch of low-budget, cheesy dragon-slaying movies, simply because I enjoy the tone they set. Now, that doesn't mean they're good, but they serve their purpose. And they're surprisingly abundant, which makes sense since I'm pretty sure most of them are just filmed at the local Renaissance Festival, and apparently, John Rhys-Davies will work for mead and The King's Fried Pickles.

While John Rhys-Davies is sadly absent from "Black Death," it stars an actor who I like even better: Sean Bean. And for those of you who are saying "who is that," screw you, that's who. It's not like this guy hasn't been in some huge freaking movies. He's just one of those actors who shows up a lot, but nobody really knows who he is. If you are having trouble placing him, he's the guy who dies in nearly every movie he's in. Yeah, that's the guy.

"No, it's totally cool. I wouldn't expect you to remember me from Lord of The Freaking Rings..."

Sean Bean is an actor I find wonderfully charismatic, even when he's brooding, which he normally is. What I love about him most is his intensity. When his characters go off the deep end, he's freaking scary. Him and Liam Neeson need to do a movie together. That would basically be the best thing ever.

"Black Death" is a movie that really feels like "The 13th Warrior" in both tone and visuals. It's a very cold looking movie, even though there's no snow, and the air just seems thick and heavy. The deep greens and browns of the surrounding forest landscape help with that, as does the wardrobe and design of the characters, who dress mostly in black over their mud-smeared, dull armor. This is a movie that you feel like you need to scrape the dirt off the camera lense in order to see everything. I dig the hell out of the look, and it's a very pretty movie to look at.

The story concerns a monk named Osmund, played by Eddie Redmayne, who's town is ravaged by the black plague. Wanting to leave, he joins a group of soldiers led by Sean Bean, who are on a mission to capture a necromancer who is reportedly bringing the dead back to life, in a town on the edge of a swamp which has mysteriously not been touched yet by the plague. As the story progresses, faith is shaken and the nature of good and evil is explored as the mystery of the necromancer is uncovered.

While "Black Death" is slightly by-the-numbers, in the end it does what it sets out to do very well. It's a very well cast film, with Eddie Remayne and Sean Bean both giving fantastic performances, but the rest of the cast, including Emun Elliott (who was in both "Game of Thrones" and "Prometheus"), was very solid as well. I particularly enjoyed John Lynch (one of the dwarfs in "Snow White & The Huntsman") as the resident bad-ass of the group who carried around a ridiculously overly-serrated short sword that looked more likely to catch on something and get him killed rather than do more damage to someone. But he bit off a piece of someone's neck during a fight, and that's awesome.

Speaking of which, the violence was acceptably brutal for the genre, but never went too overboard with it. There are scenes that could have gotten really grim and disgusting really, really quickly, but since director Christopher Smith knows what he's doing, the violence manages to be disturbing and hard-hitting without actually showing all that much, at least compared to some other ultra-violent splatter-fests.

I also have to give the movie credit for having a pretty effective "I'm not quite sure what to believe anymore" twist near the end of the film, which might pave the way for some good discussion afterwords. And the final end of the film was just unexpected and messed up enough to be really awesome. I'm sure not everyone would agree, but as far as fitting the theme of what the nature of good and evil truly is, it is an ending that really works. It's the rare film that has an epilogue that makes you say "Dude, they need to make that into a movie!"

And yeah, Sean Bean dies. It's not really a spoiler at this point. He dies in every dang movie, and I've seen him die a lot, but "Black Death" contains one of the most epic Sean Bean deaths ever. Not only is it completely hardcore the way this guy goes out, but he has a moment of self-satisfaction beforehand, culminating in the line "I am Death" which is just awesomely bad ass. I always hate to see him go in a movie, but as long as his death scene is sweet, it was all worth it.

He is the only man to have been shot in the face by Batman through a book of Yeats poetry. So far.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I liked "Black Death." It's the kind of movie I can just kick back, drink a glass of wine and escape into a dark fantasy. It ain't high art, but it's entertaining as hell. Recommended.