In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2008)

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I just love movies with a bad plot, unrealistic scenes, over the top acting. They can be very entertaining. I expected this movie to be really bad, but still fun to watch. However, even with these extremely low expectations the movie is awful... Great actors, even some good acting. But a horrible story, totally predictable script, completely unrealistic. Terrible screenplay, terrible effects, ridiculous props. Waste of time. Really. I can only wonder why great actors like Lyotta, Rhys Davis and Statham ever decided to star in this movie. What did they miss when they signed up for this? Did they even read the script? This movie is just some Lord of the Rings fan fiction of terribly bad quality. Would have been impressive if some students had made it with virtually no budget. But as is I can only advise people to stay away from this horrible piece of work.

In The Name Of The King stars Jason Statham as farmer Farmer (no, that is not a typing mistake), who is drawn into a battle between good and evil that sees him finally claiming his birthright: the Kingdom of Ehb.Jason Statham (The Transporter, The Expendables), Leelee Sobieski (Eyes Wide Shut, Deep Impact), John Rhys-Davies (Raider Of The Lost Ark, The Lord Of The Rings), Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black), Kristanna Loken (Terminator 3), Matthew Lillard (Scream, Scooby Doo), Ray Liotta (Goodfellas), and Burt Reynolds (Deliverance, Smokey And The Bandit): an all-star cast in an almost all-crap movie.I say 'almost' because, despite his many failings—shockingly bad storytelling and an inability to command a decent performance from any of his stars—much-derided director Uwe Boll actually manages to pull off several surprisingly impressive battle scenes and delivers quite a few aesthetically pleasing, CGI-enhanced, sweeping panoramas in the style of Peter Jackson, all of which make this nonsense just about bearable if in a forgiving mood.3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for gratuitous ninja action. Ninjas can make anything seem a little bit better.

Awful is the only word for the film. My son was an extra so I had to be on set while he was in the film. What I saw of the production that day did not inspire confidence the film would be at all decent. There was little no consideration being given to how the scenes should work or have continuity between takesWhen we finally watched it when was screened here in Victoria and it was worse than I could have imagined. In some of the scenes I could see the problems with the continuity caused by no attention to any detail.The plot is more or less missing for the movie which leaves you ask Why? most of the time.Burt Reynolds as the king is so bad as to almost be funny.The only actors that brought anything to the film were Jason Statham and Ron Perlman

The fantasy genre certainly has its ups and downs. On the one hand, we've got epic, multi-award winning sagas like the "Lord of the Rings". In the other we've also got a good amount of laughably bad, shoddily made ones like "Dungeons & Dragons". Earning itself a likely permanent spot among the worst of is "In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale". It's a film that is not only poorly acted, written and made, but it's also tedious and excruciating to watch. The story follows a man creatively named Farmer (Jason Statham) whose son is killed by an army of orcs I mean Krugs. His wife is captured so off he goes to rescue her from the creatures and their foul overlord, the evil wizard Gallian (Ray Liotta?! Say it isn't so!). He gets some assistance from an old friend Norrick (Ron Perlman? Seriously?). We learn that Gallian is planning on raising an army to overthrow the king of the land (Burt Reynolds) with the help of the king's sniveling, slimy nephew, Duke Fallow (Matthew Lillard). Time for some sword battles, epic battles in the rain, wizardry, some Ringwraith knock-offs and some silly political backstabbing. Take it away Uwe Boll! I'm not going to say that this movie rips off the Lord of the Rings, but there are some elements that are surprisingly similar. We've got the dueling wizards, with John Rhys-Davies (who played Gimli in the Peter Jackson films) playing the good counterpart to Gallian, we've got the armies of orcs, the elf-like forest creatures, the shadowy horse riders that Gallian uses to command his armies and a couple of scenes here and there. I'm not saying that this is a terrible movie because of these though, I'm saying the movie's so bad even if it was the first fantasy film you ever saw it you would have a hard time sitting through it.First of all, what kind of protagonist are we given? A guy named "Farmer". Apparently he calls himself that because he believes that a man is whatever he does. Does that mean that if he becomes the mayor of the town he'll change his name to "Mayor Mayor"? Jason Statham has had his share of bad movies but he's never been more wooden or less charismatic than here. Even when he's throwing boomerangs or inexplicably doing karate kicks, you'll wish the film was following someone else. Singling out Statham isn't quite fair though because pretty much everyone here comes off as an amateur. Matthew Lillard plays his character way over the top. It's a wonder the guy hasn't been thrown in a dungeon under suspicion of every single unsolved murder in the city. Ray Liotta looks absolutely bored in every scene he's in, but might just be trying to turn invisible so no one notices him. Overall, everyone is trying to get through the cringe-worthy dialog as best they can but few escape unharmed. I'd give some examples, but the film's lack of subtitles (an inexcusable sin considering this DVD was released in 2008) makes it hard to quote.I was actually taken aback by how shoddy the action sequences were. Every scene where farmer goes around kicking looks very staged and are not the least bit exciting. Late into the film they explain why our titular character is able to kick so much ass, but until then these Krugs come off as real chumps. A significant amount of them fall down after being kicked in the chest and then never get up and come on, they can't take down an old guy armed with a pickax? Story-wise, it comes off as pretty laughable often. I know it's for dramatic effect, but I'd like to imagine that the reason there happened to be a wedding going on when the Krugs first attack is that they're just jerks and wanted to ruin this perfect day by setting the town on fire and killing everyone in sight. Even the special effects aren't very good. Whenever Farmer throws his boomerang, it's an obvious computer generated effect and several of the environments looks downright cheap. I'm not talking about the sets, which are decent enough. I'm talking about the wide shots with castles and such.To the film's credit the Krugs and done with practical costumes and while their armor and weapons look cheap, at least they don't clash with the hapless villagers they're slaughtering. The elves (or whatever they are called, to my knowledge they were never named in the movie) are played by talented acrobats that do their own stunts. Hurray for faint praise! The fact that I had to re-watch part of the film to jog my memory brings me to the film's biggest flaw: it's too long and it's boring. This beast runs at slightly over two hours and there's just nothing here that will capture your interest. The characters barely have any personalities, the legions of opponents aren't menacing and their masters are one-dimensional. The battles are edited frenetically, meaning you're going to have a hard time figuring out who is winning and which character is dying when things get rough. It's really difficult to explain why the film is boring, but I can easily see people turning this one off before finishing it. It's Uwe Boll's shoddy direction that sinks what could have been at the very least a film that's so-bad-it's-good into an absolute bore to sit through.Not even a reasonably big budget could save the curse of Uwe Boll. "In the Name of the King" proves itself to be a film that is utterly devoid of any fun moments, aside from a few action scenes where you can laugh at them ironically. It's absolutely terrible and I beg of you to stay away from it. (Theatrical version on DVD, January 24, 2014)