In the Name of the King

In the Name of the King

Directed by Uwe Boll

(PG-13)

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

A farmer loses his family and sets out on an epic voyage to find them.

?

German director Uwe Boll has yet to learn his lesson, said Mac Rogers in New York. Video games aren’t meant to be made into movies, but Boll just won’t quit. The filmmaker has built a career turning games into financial disasters that occasionally pass as entertainment. He somehow scraped together $60 million and cajoled a “cast of (mostly) shamefaced has-beens” to make In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. The film chronicles the voyage of a farmer (Jason Statham) who seeks revenge after his son is killed and his wife is kidnapped. Plenty of dungeons-and-dragons drama ensues in a movie that, despite its title, contains neither a dungeon nor a siege. This is a “laughable, lousy impersonation” of better fantasy films, said John Serba in the Grand Rapids, Mich., Press. Boll obviously scrounged the remnants of a “Lord of the Rings rummage sale.” As a wizard, Ray Liotta channels Wayne Newton, and Burt Reynolds, as the king, seems long past his glory days. Nothing can save this film, said Frank Scheck in The Hollywood Reporter. It even fails at delivering “a suitable level of camp” to keep us from cringing through all 127 minutes.