Boll is best-known for adapting video games to the big screen with Alone in the Dark, Bloodrayne, etc. Not only this, but his films are just awful and this is, of course, why we watch them. In the Name of the King is a bit of an odd duck in the Boll canon as it has big name actors and lots of them: Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Burt Reynolds, Ray Liotta, and Matthew Lillard. Having such names proved to be a mixed blessing as, the film was so bad, my mind couldn't help but wander and think about the actors' previous efforts. With the exception of Rhys-Davies and Sobieski, folks pretty much walked through this movie without trying too much.
Liotta was downright hilarious as the evil Gallian. I kept waiting for him to wander outside his infernal fortress over to a wagon and start poking around in a trunk only to pull out a satchel or a bag of white powder. That for him to start swearing profusely, which he never did. I don't think Boll actually directed any of his male leads to use a voice other than their normal speaking voices. Gallian saying, "Fine! We'll accelerate" in his Jersey accent is one of my favorite moments in the whole film. Rhys-Davies seemed like he was having fun with the part though, considering his Merick is a magus, I had to wonder why there was such a paucity of magic until the end when he and Gallian have their showdown. He was a pretty useless magus, if you ask me.
Matthew Lillard played Duke Fallow, the nephew of King Konreid, who was looking to usurp the throne. I don't know if Fallow is a character from the video game or whether Boll just wanted some Hamlet-like persona, but he is just terrible. He's a whiny, snively, little git portrayed with way too much histrionics by Lillard. Some great facial contortions, I'll grant you that, but otherwise just plain annoying. I don't mean simply that he was evil and I longed for his comeuppance; I mean Fallow was irritating and I couldn't wait for him to be off-screen. There are some villains that I love to watch – Darth Vader, for instance – and steal the show. Fallow just needed to steal away into the night never to return.
Burt Reynolds played the king and I don't feel there's much to say about his performance other than I imagine he couldn’t wait for shooting to be over so he could go pick up his check. By far the best element of the film was seeing Leelee Sobieski in scale armor.
As Muriella, she did a decent job. She's Merick's daughter and is beginning to learn to wield magic. By the end of the film, she's a fully-armed and operational wizard but we never get to see much of the progression. She goes from being alright at it to kicking ass and taking names at the end. In between she doesn't do much except stumble upon a group of hottie dryads who know how to hold their own in battle.
Perhaps the best scene was during the siege when Gallian's minons, ogre-like creatures called Krug, began lighting themselves on fire and launching themselves in catapults at the good guys. Now, that was funny.
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