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aka: Ultraviolet

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"Hello. My name is Violet and I was born into a world you may not understand."

Ultraviolet is a 2006 Science Fiction / Action film starring Milla Jovovich as the eponymous Violet, fighting in a guerrilla war against the oppressive Arch-Ministry government in a dystopian future.

Violet is a hemophage, a person infected with The Virus that produces symptoms similar to traditional vampirism. The infection confers superhuman senses, strength and agility, but is ultimately fatal. Violet became infected while pregnant, and lost her unborn child as a result of experiments performed on her in a concentration camp for hemophages. She is in the terminal stages of the disease, and her latest mission is also expected to be her last.

Violet infiltrates an Arch-Ministry stronghold disguised as a courier, and escapes with what is supposed to be an ultimate weapon, something which will kill the few remaining hemophages with a single blow. But the "weapon" turns out to be a child named Six, prompting Violet to defy both her own kind, who want him dead, and the Ministry, who want him back.

Ultraviolet was deliberately created to stylistically resemble a Comic Book, with brilliantly colored outfits and hair, and an airbrushed appearance to close-ups. As with many comic books, the action scenes are deliberately over the top. It was not well-received, with a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 9%, but some find it So Bad, It's Good or a Guilty Pleasure.

In 2008, the studio Madhouse produced a 12-Episode Anime series loosely based on the film titled Ultraviolet: Code 044.

Not to be confused with Ultraviolet (1998) the British television series, which was also a modern take on vampires, but which could otherwise not be more different in story, style and tone.


This film provides examples of:

  • Action Girl: Violet, of course.
  • Adaptational Wimp: Daxus isn't a hemophage in the Novelization.
  • Animated Adaptation: Has a loose anime adaptation by Madhouse called Ultraviolet: Code 044.
  • Anguished Declaration of Love: Garth, after he saves V's life, has a tiny moment of this, after V asks why he brought her back at all.
    Garth: Isn't it... isn't it obvious?
  • Ate His Gun/Driven to Suicide: It's implied that V would have done this when she's in her Heroic BSoD post-Six's "death" and after seeing her ex-husband with his new family.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Daxus. It helps that he is a hemophage himself.
  • Badass and Child Duo: Violet and Six.
  • Big Bad: Vice Cardinal Ferdinand Daxus, the ruthless leader of the Arch-Ministry government.
  • Borrowed Biometric Bypass: The Arch-Ministry has a system to scan someone entering a secure facility to make sure they aren't vampires. It involves two thick needles stabbing the subject in the wrists. Getting around it by temporarily altering one's blood seems fairly simple.
  • Bloodless Carnage: The movie isn't bloodless but the fight scenes are inexplicably clean, even when our heroine is pressing that nice sharp blade to mooks in spotless white clothing. What little blood does result is usually obscured by motion blur.
  • Bottomless Magazines: People do run out of ammo. Occasionally. Semi-justified with the whole idea of "flat-space technology". Violet, for example, only needs to bend her wrists to have her flat-space wristband feed bullets right into her guns, which makes one wonder why not build a literal bottomless magazine to begin with.
  • Bring My Red Jacket: Invoked. When Violet receives a nasty gash on her hand, her color-changing clothes immediately change to red.
  • Bullethole Door: A variation. Violet shoots at the hinge on the passenger side of her car. The door manages to stick until she slams the car passenger-side into a subway entrance, sending the door flying off.
  • Car Fu: Violet uses a sedan to crush a large group of mooks against a wall.
  • Censor Shadow / Sexy Silhouette: Used when Violet walks nude through the scanning chamber, with shadows covering most of her body while the dim ultraviolet lights showing only her shapely silhouette.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Daxus's flamethrower pistol, which actually fires twice. The first time is in squirting flammable gel, which provides Violet with her Flaming Sword. The second is when she then uses the flamethrower itself during the ensuing battle.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Daxus openly admits that he couldn't beat Violet in a straight fight, so he tries to use a flamethrower. When that fails, he kills the light in the dome so his own hemophage night vision will give him an edge.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: When Violet is confronted by a mob of fellow superhuman hemophage bad-asses, she cuts every single one of their heads off with a single swing.
  • Cool Shades: Part of Violet's outfit.
  • Cool Sword: Violet's sword, as seen on the movie poster above.
  • Cosmic Deadline: Which seems to set about twenty minutes in.
  • Deadly Dodging: Violet kills most of a group of gunmen mooks this way. It helps that they were stupid enough to stand in a circle around her with guns pointed inwards...
  • Death by Cameo: Director Kurt Wimmer cameos as a Red Shirt hemophage.
  • Decontamination Chamber: Violet has to walk through an ultraviolet scanning chamber as part of a security screening.
  • Dystopia: Ultraviolet is set in a world run by a Knight Templar health organization trying to eradicate a disease which gives anyone infected superpowers. But they seem to have given up on finding a cure and instead just kill the infected.
  • Eating the Eye Candy: The head of research is seen doing this to Violet as she exits the Decontamination Chamber naked and starts getting dressed.
  • Elite Mooks: The guys with katanas... maybe. You'd have to be either crazy-good or just plain crazy to be armed with a sword when everyone else has access to guns.
  • Extended Disarming: The computer attempts to tally all the weapons in Violet's Hyperspace Arsenal. It finally gives up and just says "many" in a very surprised-sounding voice.
  • Eye Scream: When two needles are injected into both of Violet's eyes.
  • Faceless Goons: The Ministry's Mooks.
  • Fanservice: Violet walking naked through the ultraviolet scanner.
  • Fictional Document: The opening credits show that the movie is supposed to be based on a series of comic books or manga.
  • Flaming Sword: In Violet and Daxus' Final Battle, they both wield one.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: One of the flavors of Faceless Goons. Considering how paranoid everyone is about disease in this era, it's probably semi-justified.
  • Girls with Guns: Violet counts with her twin uzis and constant use of Gun Kata and She-Fu.
  • Government Conspiracy: Daxus isn't looking to wipe out the hemophages; he's pretty much already done that. He's created an illness that targets humans that will require all infected people to line up every day for a cure, thus allowing him to rule them.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: The Blood Chinois speak (very formal) Vietnamese. Violet speaks it badly.
  • Gravity Screw: Violet wears a gravity leveller on her belt that allows her to use this trope to great effect. Her motorcycle has such a device as well, allowing her to flee from her foes along the sides of skyscrapers.
  • Gun Kata: And lots of it.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: How Daxus goes out, while on fire no less.
  • Hammerspace: Used liberally. The hemophage strike team in the opening has shoulder-mounted ones that holds swords, Violet has her wrist-mounted Hyperspace Arsenal, Garth has an entire Mad Scientist Laboratory in a semi, Six is initially held in a suitcase, and Daxus produces both a flamethrower and sword from nowhere.
  • Heal It With Fire: In the Final Battle, Violet's hands are cut up pretty badly, so she fires her SMGs so she can use the muzzle heat to cauterize the wounds.
  • Heroic BSoD: Violet suffers this after she believes that Six has died.
  • Hero-Tracking Failure: The movie has several such scenes, but none is more blatant than when Violet is on a gravity-defying motorcycle and running from two helicopter gunships armed with miniguns. Thousands of bullets are spewed in her direction, and they seemingly manage to hit everywhere - including ahead! - except from where she currently is.
  • Hollywood Darkness: Averted. When the hemophages shoot out the lights, it actually gets too dark to see what happens. Given the amount of bodies on the ground when the lights come back on, we can guess, though.
  • "How Many?" "All Of Them"
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Violet caries a ridiculously large number of guns and her sword in a pocket dimension. This leads to a Funny Moment when the computer in the Arch-Ministry building scans her for hidden weapons.
  • Impersonation Gambit: Violet impersonates a courier in order to get inside the Arch-Ministry's headquarters and steal the supposed weapon that will wipe out the hemophages. She almost succeeds, until the end when the courier she supposed impersonating arrives, making her having to get out of there guns blazing.
  • Implausible Fencing Powers: Violet routinely takes out hordes of submachine-gun-toting mooks with her sword.
  • Impossibly Cool Clothes: Violet's wardrobe. It even changes colors to fit the current scene.
  • Invincible Hero: Violet isn't really challenged by any of the enemies she meets. As a hemophage, she's far more powerful than mere humans. Even when confronted by a dozen hemophages, she kills them all in a single blow.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Violet. She's extremely mean to Six, but warms up to him near the end.
  • Kaleidoscope Hair: Violet hair changes color, much like her clothes.
  • Kill the Lights: The final villain plunges the room into total darkness, explaining that he can see in the dark. Violet counters by lighting her sword on fire.
  • Knight Templar: Daxus.
  • Mad Scientist Laboratory: Garth's semi trailer is a modern version of one, anyway.
  • Male Gaze: There are many shots of Violet's rear and abs.
  • Mama Bear: Violet.
  • The Man Behind the Curtain: Subverted. Daxus is a great deal more dangerous than he looks. Unlike DuPont from Equilibrium, it's made clear halfway through the film instead of foreshadowed.
  • Media Scaremongering: A big part of the setting is that the government and the media have made politicized the hemophage issue to increase their power, to the point of treating them as terrorists/monsters rather than sick people. Daxus even has a cure, but is withholding it to support the power of Archministry.
  • Monkey Morality Pose: Three vampiric goons receive wounds causing them to adopt this pose before they collapse.
  • Mook Chivalry: Forming circles around Violet, attacking one-by-one, charging forward with guns at ready - it has it all.
  • More Dakka: Violet uses her extradimensional space/folding technology to almost achieve enuff dakka.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Violet played by Milla Jovovich constantly wears ultra-tight clothing that hugs her figure and also wears low-slung pants shows a great deal of exposed midriffs.
  • Must Have Caffeine: Daxus gets his coffee fix, even in the midst of battling hemophages.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: Due to coming out during a spate of vampire action films there was no mention of the characters' "condition".
  • No-Paper Future: Violet has a bracelet that's actually a bendy credit card... which she uses to buy disposable cell phones, printed on paper.
  • Non-Action Guy: Garth.
  • Not Even Human: Daxus is revealed to be a hemophage, despite being the leader of the Arch-Ministry.
  • Not Using the "Z" Word: The movie only mentions the word "vampire" thrice, first in the exposition dump when Violet notes that it's a slur used for hemophages, and a second time (in Vietnamese) when Violet is confronted by the Blood Chinois. The third is towards the end, when Daxus points out she is one and so her helping a human child makes little sense.
  • Novelization: A book version of the film was written by Yvonne Navarro, which is based and expands upon the original, uncut screenplay.
  • Oblivious to Love: Violet seems completely unaware that Garth has feelings for her.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: The hemophages are infected with a disease that's been around since ancient times, creating the myth of vampires. This virus, however, has been modified in an attempt to create Super Soldiers.
  • Patient Zero: Daxus is the first hemophage.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: All of the hemophages, but especially Violet. Six can be seen this way as well.
  • Pietà Plagiarism: At the end.
  • Poison and Cure Gambit: Daxus Evil Plan is to unleash a plague targeting humans, to which he has the cure. This is because hemophages are nearly extinct, and he needs a new plague to justify the Arch-Ministry's continued existence.
  • The Power of Love: Violet crying over Six's body brings him back to life... because her tears infected him with hemophagia.
  • Pro-Human Transhuman: Subverted by Violet when tried to be reasoned that she was human once, she dismisses it, saying that humans were who made her that way and then wanted her dead, so she owes them no loyalty.
  • Readings Are Off the Scale: A computer scans Violet and tries to count how many weapons she has in her Hyperspace Arsenal. It eventually gives up and says "Many" in a surprised tone of voice.
  • Rule of Cool: The movie practically runs on it.
    • Violet and Daxus both wield swords that look awesome, but would be highly impractical in a real sword-fight. Violet's katana has a square-edged "chisel" shape, that would not only greatly reduce its ability to both cut and pierce, but also make it much more susceptible to breaking. Daxus' sword has jagged teeth like a saw blade, which would render it very unwieldy and actually hinder its ability to make clean cuts.
  • Scenery Porn: Between the sleek utopian sci-fi architecture (some of which isn't CGI fabrication, but shot in real buildings), and the insanely vibrant color palette, every single frame is like wallpaper.
  • Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: Violet pointing her sword to the viewer in the poster.
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: Violet isn't too bothered to take off all her clothes to go through the ultraviolet scan room. In the Novelization she notes the entire world lost it's modesty due to constant medical checks the government forces on the populace. She still notes with some irritation, that all the doctors are checking her out as she strips.
  • She-Fu: Need you ask?
  • Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: The Mooks are so very guilty of this. When entering the stronghold at the end of the film, Violet kills dozens of mooks with assault rifles in the reception area. The next area is a room filled with soldiers with swords. She kills them too. Then a room of guys with more ARs, which have her in a perfect crossfire. They even have cover. Violet kills them too. Walks across a bridge, then reaches the final room before her objective, which is shaped like a tube. One entrance, one exit. The soldiers near the entrance are the ones armed with swords, while the ones in the rear have the rifles. You'd think they'd have the sword guys in the back where they wouldn't block their allies' fire, or even pick her off with sniper fire while she was crossing the long, exposed bridge.
  • Slouch of Villainy: Nerva is seen doing this.
  • Shoulders-Up Nudity: Violet when she goes through the U.V. Decontamination Chamber.
  • Smug Snake: Nerva and Daxus.
  • Sound-Only Death: One scene starts with a closed door when you hear gunshots, sword sounds, screams, mayhem... and then Violet comes through the door alone.
  • Step into the Blinding Fight: During the Final Battle Daxus plunges the room into total darkness, explaining that he can see in the dark. Violet counters this by lighting her sword on fire.
  • Storming the Castle: Violet does this near the end, in order to rescue Six.
  • Storyboard Body: Violet has tattoos in Thai Hindi on the fingers of one hand, listing romantic life stages. The pinky is "Comrade", the ring finger "Lover", the middle finger reads "Wife". She became a hemophage before the next finger could be tattooed with "Mother".
  • Strapped to an Operating Table: When trying to infiltrate the Arch-Ministry Violet is strapped to a chair and has several pointy objects and needles prod her to verify she's human.
  • Straw Hypocrite: Daxus. Turns out that not only is he a hemophage like those he hunts down, he was the very first one and let the virus loose in the first place.
  • Swiss-Army Tears: Violet's tears infect Six with hemophagia, which saves his life.
  • Sword Sparks: Used to light the Flaming Sword.
  • Synthetic Plague: The hemophage virus was engineered by Daxus who goes on to take over the world using the infected as a bogeyman.
  • Technically-Living Vampire: Hemophages are victims of a blood disease whose symptoms include superhuman strength and agility, blood cravings, and eventual death.
  • Terrified of Germs: Daxus exemplifies this as the head of a society of such. He constantly wears gloves and nasal filters, and won't touch objects that haven't been sterilised. Even the pistol he keeps in his suit is sealed in a sterilised bag.
  • The Only One I Trust: Garth is this for Violet.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Daxus ordering his entire army of mooks to open fire on Violet.... or so he thinks.
  • Toplessness from the Back: Violet's bare backside is seen when she has to go through the ultraviolet scanner while naked, although Censor Shadow obscures most of her.
  • Throw-Away Guns: Violet has hundreds of weapons stored in high-tech Hammerspace, so she just drops empties.
  • Transhuman Treachery: The hemophages. To be fair, the humans locked them in concentration camps, experimented on them, and have almost wiped them out.
  • Unorthodox Reload: Violet reloads her guns via tiny portals to her Hyperspace Arsenal above her wrists.
  • Vampire Refugee: Violet, for the last part of the movie.
  • Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Violet vomits after her first fight sequence, a consequence of the drugs she was using to disguise her vampire traits.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The movie's setting is likely somewhere in the States, but the exact location isn't pinpointed. In the opening montage a panning shot of the city shows what appears to be the Pearl Oriental Tower (a real-life skyscraper located in Shanghai) in the background (noticeable moments before the black orbs hits a building) but there's no indication that the film takes place in Asia.
  • Withholding the Cure: Demonizing hemophages as monsters instead of treating them as victims of disease enabled the "Medical Establishment" to take control of the government and become ArchMinistry. Unfortunately, they did too good a job of hunting them and, by the time of the movie, needed a new threat to "protect" the world from — a "human antigen", cultivated inside of a Living MacGuffin. Once it's released, people will have to line up at ArchMinistry to get the cure or die.
  • You Are Already Checked In: After Violet pretends to be a courier in order to sneak into the Arch-Ministry building, the real courier shows up and her ID is rejected, thus alerting the guards.
  • You Are Number 6: Literally true for the boy whom Violet abducts from the Arch-Ministry. When she asks the boy what his name is, he responds by holding up six fingers. Later on, Daxus reveals to Violet why Six is known as such: Six is his clone; specifically, number six in a series of eight.
  • Zombie Infectee: Propaganda has led many to confuse "vampire" with "zombie" - in the first scene, a cop cuts his finger on a hemophage fang and is cold-bloodedly executed by his partner the instant it's noticed.

Alternative Title(s): Ultraviolet

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