Uwe Boll

Uwe Boll
Retarded Idiot or Mad Genius

This is a project I have been wanting to do for awhile I’m here today to review Uwe Boll not a movie but the man himself I’d like to look at his film works and see if he is really as bad as people say he is. At the time of writing I have already reviewed all his movies based on video game so you can look those up if you’re curious what I thought of his movies.

Boll was born June 22nd 1965 in Germany and believe it or not he did go to college. We have Marlon Brando to blame for getting Boll interested in movies because it was after seeing the film Mutiny on the Bounty Boll decided to go into film making at the tender age of 10.

His movies have not always been video game adaptations though his first two American releases where horror and drama respectfully. Both of which got decent reviews believe it or not. In between his last few videogame movies he made a couple of original films as well. The first being Seed a horror movie about a man who kills a lot of people and then caught and sentenced to death. However to avoid having to release him on a state law that says if the person doesn’t die with three shocks from the electric chair they have to be set free. The police bury seed alive. Of course seed gets out of the grave and hunts down everyone that did wrong to him.

The second movie is Tunnel Rats a drama about a group of U.S. soldiers and Viet Cong soldiers who are fighting each other in a series of underground tunnels. Seed got ok reviews but Tunnel Rats got really decent reviews at least from unbiased people. I honestly think that some critics both at home and professional will automatically call a Boll movie bad just because his name is on it and truthfully that’s not fair.
I mean if I didn’t watch Postal just because Boll did it then I would have missed a hilarious movie. Which brings me to my next point I think it’s possible that Boll’s video game movies may have just been jokes. No no hear me out. There are so many mistakes so many plot holes such stupid dialog how could it be anything but a joke.

Ok here’s one of my favorite lines from House of the Dead. The main bad guy has one of the humans on the table and has just finished explaining his evil plot and the human says “you wanted to become immortal but why?” and the genius writers have the bad guy respond with “to live forever” I mean come on if that’s not comedy that I think Boll may have a brain tumor. In the same movie we get a flashback scene that flashes back every event in the movie.

It’s things like this that make me believe that the video game movies have to be a joke because they are so horrible but all his original work is at the very least decent. It’s not the best but then again it is all indie work as he funds his own movies so you can’t expect much. (and no I’m not saying indie movies are bad I’m just saying that most of the time they are not the best with that rare movie making it big like Donnie Darko, Clerks, Evil Dead, and so on,)

So again I state that just because his name is on something don’t immediately judge it as bad. I challenge anyone who is a fan of movies to find an original Boll movie not one based on a video game and watch it unbiased you might be surprised.
Putting aside his directing and writing abilities let’s talk about Boll as a person for a second. I think generally he is an ok guy and pretty funny too. When postal came out Boll released a video of himself saying that directors like Michael Bay and Eli Roth where idiots and didn’t know anything about making movies. Obviously a joke and a very funny one at that, when postal came out he also claimed that it would beat the fourth Indiana Jones at the box office again another joke.

One event involving Boll is hilarious in its own right. He challenged 5 of his harshest critics to a boxing match each fight lasting ten rounds. Boll beat them all, and afterwards stated that he now likes the critics for having guts. One other thing Boll has done which I think is pretty interesting is in two of his films, Tunnel Rats and Stoic really didn’t have scripts and the actors where pretty much improvising their lines. This shows great talent on Bolls part for being able to direct the actor’s emotions and even more talent on the actor’s parts for being able to come up with dialog on the spot.

He has a couple movies coming up soon that I am genuinely interested in seeing. The first is called Rampage it’s about a guy who gets fed up with society makes a body suit out of Kevlar and goes on a “rampage” killing lots and lots of people kind of like Natural Born Killers or Falling Down. The second is called Zombie Massacre and it looks to be a funny over the top zombie movie and with Boll displaying skills in comedy I have high hopes.

So all in all is Boll the next Ed Wood? Maybe but Ed’s movies are only popular because of how absolutely bad and ridicules they are and while Bolls video game movies fit this description his original movies are not all bad and have actually won indie film awards including best director.

So like my other reviews let’s give Mr. Boll a score I say as a director he gets 5 out of 10. He is nowhere near the greatest director ever but as an indie director he’s certainly not the worst. So next time your cruising the new release shelf and you see a movie with the words “An Uwe Boll film” then pick it up make sure it’s not based on a video game and give it a shot.