Though the reviews haven’t been great for it, I’ve been looking forward to Ultraviolet for a long time already ‘cos of Milla Jovovich; now I have another reason in its writer-director Kurt Wimmer, who also made this stunner. It’s hard to believe that this movie was the work of a hyphenate rather than a team of writers and a separate director, so spectral is its range of style and ideas. The cold, clinical, Kubrickian / Orwellian sci-fi gives way seamlessly to John Woo / Wachowski brothers action sequences, and Wimmer dabs on the emotion like paint, all in perfect moderation and none of it bleeding into the wrong scenes. In its final, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, appearance, the emotion is damn near overwhelming. Wimmer seems to have reached the exact same place as Christian Bale’s character does at the end of the movie, able wonderfully to restrain the emotion when necessary, able to turn it on full blast when needed, able to direct it with the utmost effiency. It seems like such a paradox in a way, handling emotion in such an almost mathematical manner; but Wimmer puts forth the proposition with extraordinary gumption. I think this is a masterpiece.

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