Successful viewing of In the Name of the King is dependent that you surrender all hope of it being good and you give up the hate towards Boll. Take that notion that it is a Boll movie and chuck it. If you don’t like what he has done to your favorite video game, stay home and play the damned thing. The man should be praised for making the movies HE wants to make. If you can somehow squander $60 million out of your local professional community and buy a property and adapt it to film then please, you have my blessing.

Acting standouts, if you can call them that, are Matt Lillard as Duke Fallow and Burt Reynolds as King Konreid, only because their characters are so over the top and deliver the best lines in the movie. To see The Burt in all his majesty take a conversation about royalty birthrights, long lost sons, and redirect it into a lecture about agricultural practices and fertilizer, then punctuate it by saying, ‘I am the King’, is really something to behold. The screen is also dominated by Ray Liotta as Gallian, a character whom seemed to have fallen out of a gay Las Vegas magician’s wardrobe; his energy and enthusiasm must be noted as well. Jason Statham, our lead man, Farmer, has about as much emotional depth as a fresh water trout and Ron Perlman is horribly underused. The rest of the cast is complimentary.

Credit is still due. Despite the manic and dumbfounding editing pace of the narrative of the film, the story does pause long enough during the action scenes. And they’re alright. Despite his budget Boll didn’t spend the money on blood packs or squibs so the violence comes in on a PG level but the choreography is okay. Boll evens pulls the camera back far enough so there is even room in some of the frames to see some of those gorgeous and ancient B.C. cedar trees in the background. Though I will say, if you’re going to oblige your action choreographer, Tony Ching, by putting his stunt team in the mix perhaps you don’t want to make them so obvious as they are in their Kato mock ups here.

In the Name of King suffers in a lot of areas. Boll really should have taken his screenwriter, Doug Taylor, round back of the set and given him a few jabs with the left when he saw the script. As funny as some of the lines were I know they weren’t meant to be. Wow, there’s some awful dialogue. What also plagues the movie is the editing by Paul Klassen and David M. Richardson. All of the separate story lines are mashed together in these 60 second vignettes that you get just enough story line out of each arc so you know what is happening to EVERYONE at the same time, even if it means inserting an unnecessary and inconclusive horse chase scene between Leelee Sobieski’s Muriella and one of Liotta’s ghost horseman, or Kristanna Loken’s Elora and her lone, maybe 5 second, trek along the mountain top, which serves to remind you that she is heading back to her forest home after helping Farmer get into the enemy stronghold. Scenes like these were dropped into the key battle scenes as if the editing team got bored with all the fighting and swordplay and said to themselves, ‘I bet the audience is wondering where that hot blonde chick is. Let’s remind them… and…. [licking lips as they stroke a few keys of the keyboard] there! On the mountain top, walking home. That’ll answer some questions’.

And despite the problems that plagued this film I still found myself enjoying it and having a good time. Yes, it has its problems, most of which is the pre-conceived notion that you’re seeing a Boll movie, but when you watch it with an audience and you prepare yourself for it then nothing but a good time can be had. Yes, it is going to be a bad movie. Yes, your eyes are going to roll into the top of your head once and a while. Sure, perhaps lineage and seaweed don’t quite gel as topics of conversation. But hell, if you’re expecting high art then stay the hell away.

'Wisdom is your hammer'.