{"id":6656,"date":"2018-12-23T23:16:33","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T04:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/?page_id=6656"},"modified":"2021-09-15T15:11:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T20:11:55","slug":"bloodrayne-deliverance-bloodrayne-2-2007-review","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/retromaggedon.com\/index.php\/movie-reviews\/bloodrayne-deliverance-bloodrayne-2-2007-review\/","title":{"rendered":"BloodRayne: Deliverance [BloodRayne 2] (2007) Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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BloodRayne: Deliverance [BloodRayne 2] (2007)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

~Review by Grawlix (October 2017)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BloodRayne: Deliverance<\/em> represents several milestones in the canon of Uwe Boll. For one thing, it\u2019s his first proper sequel. It\u2019s also his first US release to not get pasted at the box office. This is because it was never released in theaters, going directly to DVD. Yes, it appears that after four straight box office bombs his US distributors finally realized that repeating the same actions was unlikely to produce a different result. Frankly I\u2019m surprised it took so long. I mean, Michael Cimino was effectively persona non grata<\/em> in Hollywood after only one bomb and he won two Oscars. Granted, Boll never came close to bankrupting an entire studio (not for lack of trying) but still, how he managed to score a $60 million budget for the first Dungeon Siege<\/em> movie after three straight flops is a trick I wish he could teach me. But in any case, that was all over now. With Deliverance<\/em>, the gravy train had officially ceased making stops at Boll station, leaving the beleaguered director to get by solely on his own ingenuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wanna guess how well that turned out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up until this point, Boll\u2019s movies were able to boast a few bright spots amid their (many and pervasive) flaws. The casts, for instance. I don\u2019t know how he did it, but Boll always managed to attract a few recognizable names who either were established enough that their Q-Ratings could handle slumming it through one of his stinkers, or else really needed to pay a few bills. The first BloodRayne<\/em>, for example, featured Kristanna Loken, Michael Madsen, Ben Kingsley, Billy Zane, and Meat Loaf. An eclectic mix, to be sure, but Boll never seemed to believe in the idea of miscasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loken, who was unable to reprise the titular role of Rayne due to scheduling conflicts (or so she claims) is now replaced by Natassia Malthe who manages the look reasonably well. The acting, not so much, but then, like in most Boll movies it\u2019s hard to know where exactly the fault lies with that one. I\u2019m not going to bother doing a roll call on the rest of the cast. Suffice it to say that many of them have more than one Boll movie on their resumes and one actor in particular, Chris Coppola (no apparent relation to the other, more famous Hollywood Coppolas), has appeared in a disturbing number of movies with dogs on their posters. To say this is the B-list would be exceedingly generous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not like all the recasting makes much difference since the movie carries over almost nothing from its predecessor. Deliverance<\/em> moves the action to the late 19th<\/sup> century American West. It\u2019s set in the town of Deliverance, a one-horse jerkwater on the fringes of civilization in the ending stages of the construction of a railroad that, it is hoped, will bring new growth and prosperity. Into this idyllic hamlet rides Billy the Kid and his gang. Billy is a vampire now, apparently, and decides that the population increase expected from the railroad will afford him an excellent supply of fresh meat to build an unstoppable vampire army. Why he doesn\u2019t just skip a few steps and move to an already populous city like a normal vampire is anybody\u2019s guess. But, since he\u2019s decided to stay in Deliverance until the buffet opens, he bites the local sheriff, abducts a few children to keep the townsfolk compliant (and to serve as an occasional snack) and moves into the mayor\u2019s residence. Billy the Kidnapper is  pursued by Pat Garrett who is a member of the vampire hunting Brimstone Society now, apparently, and also by the titular Rayne, a damphyr (half-vampire) and also a member of the Brimstones, though her motivation turns personal quickly when she discovers that ol\u2019 Will Bonney made a meal out of some of her friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a strong suspicion that Deliverance<\/em> started life as a generic western before Boll got his hands on it. The script hews heavily towards western genre clich\u00e9s with the vampire stuff seemingly slotted in wherever it might fit. There\u2019s your typical saloon complete with piano player and poker games, a brothel, a fire and brimstone preacher, and even a hangin\u2019 at the gallows. There\u2019s gunfights too\u2026 occasionally, and though there is some lip service paid to the need for garlic and silver bullets, they still play out like they would in any other western and the vampires are occasionally dispatched without comment by more conventional means. Billy the Kid inexplicably sports some sort of unspecified Slavic accent, as if it\u2019s just something that comes with the fangs. He also affects a genteel civility, as if he\u2019s some sort of ancient Dracula-esque antediluvian which really makes things confusing since the real Billy the Kid was only 21 when he was killed in 1881 (hence, y\u2019know, \u201cthe kid\u201d) and the movie can\u2019t take place any later than 1900 or so. Ugh, but whatever, I\u2019ve already thought about the plot way more than any of the writers had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are three of them, by the way. Three writers credited on this thing. I suspect each one blames the others for how the final product turned out though frankly there\u2019s nothing in this movie that any of them could point to with pride. There isn\u2019t a single line of clever dialog throughout the picture, though there is plenty of swearing, seemingly for its own sake. And the plotting is a clumsy hatchet job when it isn\u2019t painfully generic. Billy\u2019s predilection for children\u2019s blood is supposed to add shock value, I guess, but just comes off as skeevy. It\u2019s precisely the kind of exploitation that someone like Boll would mistake for being edgy or daring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior Boll movies could at least be counted on to provide some watchable action, but even on that level Deliverance<\/em> disappoints (another casualty of the diminished budget, I have to assume). The battles are few and far between, and when they do finally take place, they\u2019re conventional western shootouts, playing out like any of a thousand others. Rayne rides into town like a badass, but she gets incapacitated early and often and proves to be a weak protagonist. She does have her signature tonfa blades which are used occasionally, most notably in a knife fight in the film\u2019s finale, but even that proves underwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the downgrade in action quantity (if not necessarily quality), Boll was seemingly forced to dip into his director\u2019s toolbox to make up the difference, although this appears to have amounted to little except a ton of closeups, and some occasional slow motion. These were intended to build tension, I guess, but that\u2019s hard to achieve when the characters haven\u2019t been developed enough for the audience to care about. It\u2019s all a poor substitute for the mindless action of his prior movies, which may have been many things, but at least they weren\u2019t dull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve read interviews with Boll before and one thing that always seems to strike the interviewer is that, for all of Boll\u2019s incompetence as a director, the guy has a genuine love for the motion picture medium itself with great enthusiasm for the filmmaking process and a surprisingly deep knowledge of its history. With that in mind, I have to wonder why he even decided to make BloodRayne: Deliverance<\/em> as it is. Like, was it seriously the only script on offer for the material? Beyond the fact that making a multi-genre period movie was bound to tax his newly truncated budget, with the exception of the occasional outlier, the Western has been a dead genre in the US for some 50 years. You\u2019d think Boll would be aware of this, but then, the guy never seemed all that good at reading the industry tea leaves. You\u2019d think he\u2019d also know that using the title \u201cDeliverance\u201d might conjure memories of dueling banjos and Ned Beatty squealing like a pig. Then again, that sometimes did feel like an apt comparison to watching this movie. One also can\u2019t help but wonder if there isn\u2019t a certain \u201cI\u2019ll show \u2018em\u201d stubbornness in his decisions as well. Would that his talent matched his ambition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the end, as usual, it\u2019s all more of a shame than anything else. Wild West Vampires is a very underrepresented subgenre and a new fun entry would\u2019ve been welcome. There are prior examples, stuff like Curse of the Undead<\/em>, or Billy the Kid Versus Dracula<\/em>, but the most recent one of those is over fifty years old and they\u2019re both pretty rancid B-movies. Unfortunately, in the most depressing way possible, BloodRayne: Deliverance<\/em> carries on that tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Grade: D-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only thing keeping this one from an F is that it has a beginning, a middle, and (most importantly) an end, and it gets through it all without completely breaking down. But every aspect of the production is subpar or worse and it\u2019s boring besides. There is no Deliverance from the suckage on display and, therefore, nothing to recommend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trailer<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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