Uwe Boll Goes Postal
August 18, 2008

Say what you will about the films of German moviemaker Uwe Boll—and plenty of people have on such websites as http://stopuweboll.org/ or the homepage for a “Stop Uwe Boll Petition” (http://www.petitiononline.com/RRH53888/petition.html)--but the man certainly has a prolific and varied output.

Boll has directed and produced (mostly through his own Germany-based Boll KG production company) nearly a dozen films since the turn of the century, including the videogame big-screen adaptations House of the Dead, BloodRayne, BloodRayne II: Deliverance and Alone in the Dark. His most recent efforts include the substantially budgeted fantasy flick In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) and the soon

“I enjoy making movies—unlike others, I don’t have to think about what my next movie will be for five years,” Boll told me in a phone interview a couple of weeks ago. “I like the process of shooting and I like genre movies.”

Indeed, though his critics come down hard on him for videogame movies and what they consider to be a constant stream of rehashes, Boll likes to point out that the genres are always different.

“There are other filmmakers who do the same movie over and over again, but I like to try different approaches and different genres,” he said. A zombie movie like House of the Dead is different from a fantasy movie like In the Name of the King, which is different from a comedy like Postal.”

Boll is particularly proud of Postal, which concerns a regular guy (Zack Ward) teams up with a cult leader (Dave Foley) and embarks on a violent rampage—only to learn that the Taliban have similar plans. The screenplay was written by Boll, the first such effort he’s made in several years.

With Postal, I stepped away from the totally mainstream videogame movies and into something a little more personal,” he said. “It’s a different kind of movie from me than you’ve seen in the last couple of years. Of course, the critics came down on it. But that’s what they do!”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on August 18, 2008 | Comments (0)