Filipe Manuel Neto
Feb 26, 2023
2/10
Fight... to get to the end of the movie.
After having managed to find some redeeming values in the first film, “In the Name of The King: a Dungeon Siege Tale”, I decided to also give its sequel a chance, also directed by Uwe Boll and, I thought, a likely sequel worthy of the first movie. However, the production was fatally injured by the brutal budget cut, perhaps due to the reception that the first film received from the public. These considerations do not, however, clear the director of his own weaknesses. Boll may not be a complete incompetent, I still don't know him well enough to evaluate him, but I've already realized from these two films that he's not particularly brilliant.
The script takes us back to the kingdom of Ehb, and the events surrounding the crown of that fantasy kingdom, when a former US Special Forces soldier is accidentally sent there. The whole story is weak, artificial, and the way the characters act is very silly and unnatural. In fact, the characters are mere figures and faces without any personality and about whom we know little and care even less. There are some attempts at action, but I believe that even the original video game is more exciting and intense than what we're given here.
The cast is led by Dolf Lundgreen, an actor I don't particularly like and who is far from what I would consider a versatile and skilled professional. He might even be, but in the hands of a director capable of extracting that from him. The actor has no difficulty taking on the role, not least because he seems to be almost the only minimally experienced professional around, but his performance is very weak. Lochlyn Munro, who should be someone more prominent, is not capable of being more imposing than a fifteen-year-old teenager on the first date. The rest of the cast, and especially the actresses, don't even deserve to be mentioned. Amateurism is a nice term to describe what they did.
Technically, we have to lament the Franciscan poverty of what is offered to us: the cuts that the production budget suffered necessarily implied cost reductions, which may explain why everything seems as fake as a theater play: from the costumes to the armament and props, the film is a Carnival from which only the sets and filming locations can be saved, chosen with care or created in CGI with competence. There is a lot of CGI here, including a dragon, and there is some investment in these resources, perhaps due to lack of budget to go further. The cinematography makes the best of these elements, but you never feel the confidence, confidence and ingenuity that the cinematography of the original film allowed the audience to exude. The soundtrack works very well, but it doesn't have the interest or sound of the one used in the first film.