Why Uwe Boll is (not!) so bad

There is a reason, why most Uwe Boll movies are seen as bad movies.

Boll is mainly just a bad storyteller. As long as he wants to tell a classical storyline, he nearly always fails. Mainly because he looses the story arcs, and with it any connection to the important elements of the plot. He looses characters and their agenda and motives – and with it often also the actors, some of them playing as bad as Ray Liotta in „In the Name of the King“. The audience is loosing the connection to both story and characters, don’t understand why and what’s going on and hence a bad movie is created. It’s probably best described by the fact, that Boll is rewriting scenes during the shooting nearly always when he directs one of mainstream movies.

That being said, he is -on the other hand- not that bad in creating interesting plots at all. I found out, that, as soon as he focuses on just one certain idea, keeps the story simple and focused and lets his actors improvise a little more, great movies can come out of the so-called „King of Trash“. When these ideas can be dealt with in staccato form, so Boll can leave out stuff without the feeling of missing an important aspect of the story arc, everything suddenly just feels fine and nice.

I realized this aspect first in „Heart of Amercia„, later I also found „Dafur“ a great piece of movie. Now, I’ve watched „Rampage“ in the uncut version – and it just works. It’s sometimes hard to believe all of this gems have come out of the mind of Boll alone. Rampage is a great example of not  having a great arc or deep characters after all, but delivering a lot of mood, atmosphere and tense suspense – which is everything this movie wants to be.

I could say it differently: It’s a common phenomena that every new Uwe Boll movie is rated with a 1 out of 10 at imdb.com by the users – even though most of them are unlikely to have seen the picture in the end after all. Rampage still gaining a 6.3 out of 10 with nearly 400 votes of 1 shows that the movie can’t be that bad. If you’re in mass murder movies and like some tense, disturbing action that leaves an uneasy state in your belly and want to see one of the longest killing sprees ever shot, you should check it out – but be sure to get the unrated/uncut version.

And remember my words: „Bingo!“

I for now, will take a look in some more of Boll’s underestimated pictures, Stoic being the next one.