The Eric Roberts Collection: Assault on Wall Street (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on April 15, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2013’s Assault on Wall Street tells the story of Jim Braxford (Dominic Purcell), a security guard who loses all of his money due to some bad investments that he had no control over and whose wife, Rosie (Erin Karpluk), kills herself rather than continue her expensive medical treatments. Jim snaps and, after listening to a bunch of angry people on MSNBC, he decides to take violent vengeance on Wall Street, targeting brokers and CEOs and ultimately launching an all-out assault on a firm owned by the cartoonishly evil Jeremy Stancroft (John Heard).

Full of anti-capitalist rhetoric and heavy-handed plot developments, Assault on Wall Street finds director Uwe Boll in a political mood. Because the film deals with economic anxiety to which everyone can relate, this film is slightly more effective than Boll’s usual films but that still doesn’t mean that it’s particularly good. It’s one of those films that takes forever to get where it’s going and the film also suffers due to Boll’s confounding decision to cast Dominic Purcell in the lead role. The blank-eyed, flat-voice Purcell gives such a spectacularly dull performance that one wonders if he was constructed out of charisma anti-matter. It doesn’t help that Purcell’s three best friends are played Edward Furlong, Michael Pare, and Keith David, all of whom come across like they would have been a better pick for the lead role.

The film ends with a spate of violence that I remember that I found to be a bit shocking when I first saw the film on cable in 2013. Of course, today, such violence has been normalized and is often celebrated on social media. I imagine that members of the creepy Luigi death cult would probably claim that Jim Braxford didn’t go far enough in his murder spree.

Two of my favorites, Eric Roberts and Lochlyn Munro, have supporting roles in this film. Munro is Jim’s broker, who makes the mistake of complaining about how he had to cancel his planned vacation to Barbados as a result of the economic meltdown. Roberts plays the lawyer who agrees to help Jim get justice but who ultimately proves to be no help at all. Both of them are memorable in their small roles, which once again leaves us to wonder why, with all the talent available, Uwe Boll apparently decided to make Dominic Purcell his muse. That was a bad investment.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

BloodRayne (2005, directed by Uwe Boll)

Posted on October 29, 2024 by Jedadiah Leland

In 18th century Romania, Rayne (Kristanna Loken) is a vampire/human hybrid who is being forced to work in a freakshow by Leonid (Meat Loaf). After Rayne escapes, she meets a fortune teller (Geraldine Chaplin) who informs her that her father is the feared king of the vampires, Kagan (Ben Kingsley), and that he raped her mother. Rayne teams up with a group of vampire hunters (Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, and Michael Madsen) and sets out to destroy her father once and for all.

BloodRayne is perhaps not the worst film ever made about a vampire/human hybrid in Romania but it’s also nowhere near the best. Instead, it’s another one of Uwe Boll’s cheap-looking video game adaptations where a group of talented actors slum it as action stars. (Michael Pare, Udo Kier, and Billy Zane also appear in the movie.) The movie is full of bad wigs and big swords. Michael Madsen and Michelle Rodriguez are neither convincing as Russians or people who lived in the 18th Century. Geraldine Chaplin tries to keep things interesting, Ben Kingsley doesn’t. Kristanna Loken is actually a good choice for Rayne, in that she’s hot and she’s convincing in the action scenes. This is an easy film to laugh at but it features enough blood and nudity to keep its target audience happy. Don’t try to follow the plot, though. You’ll get a headache.

While we were watching the movie last night, Lisa suggested that Ben Kingsley was using his Gandhi Oscar as a stake. Now that would have been something worth seeing!

The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: House of The Dead (dir by Uwe Boll)

Posted on October 8, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You know things are going to be bad when the 2003 video game adaptation House of the Dead opens with a lengthy narration in which we’re told exactly who is going to die in the film and who is going to live. Narration is usually a bad sign, in general. Narration that gives away a huge chunk of the plot during the opening five minutes is even worse.

Things get worse when we’re told that a bunch of college students need to find a boat so that they can attend the “rave of the century,” which is being held on an isolated island. (The island, by the way, is known as the Island of the Dead but no one seems to be that concerned by the name.) From what we see of the greatest rave of all time, it apparently involves one stage, two speakers, and exactly 8 people dancing. The dancers are often shot in slow motion, which I guess is meant to make them look like they’re having more fun than they actually are. Myself, I’m wondering why anyone would hold the “rave of the century” on an island that no one can find. According to the banner above the stage, the whole thing is being sponsored by Sega, the company behind the House of the Dead video game that gave this movie its name.

Things quickly go downhill once the zombies show up and start killing everyone. It doesn’t take long for most of the disposable characters to get killed. The majority of the film is made up of people either running through the forest or hiding in a house or a boat. Because none of the characters really have any personality, you’re never quite sure who anyone is. Their deaths don’t really register because it never seems as if they were living to begin with. Watching the film, it’s hard not to feel that everyone on the island is a member of the living dead. It’s just that some of them haven’t realized it yet.

As mentioned above, House of the Dead is based on a video game and, frequently, the action is punctuated with heavily pixelated scenes that have been lifted straight from the game. On the one hand, you have to admire the film for being honest about what it is. On the other hand, you have to regret that the film itself is never as much fun as the game probably is.

House of the Dead was one of several video game adaptations that German director Uwe Boll was responsible for in the early aughts. Up until he retired from the film industry, it was regularly argued by online film critics that Boll was the world’s worst director. Boll responded to the criticism by challenging his most vehement critics to a boxing match. A few of the critics accepted the challenge and Boll actually did fight them, knocking all of them out. I imagine that’s probably every filmmaker’s secret fantasy.

Myself, I will say that I don’t think Boll is the worst director in the world. He’s not particularly good but there are worst directors out there. That said, House of the Dead is pretty bad. The dialogue is leaden, the characters are bland, and even the intentional attempts at humor fall flat. Seventeen years after it was first released, it still pretty much represents the nadir of video game adaptations.

Anyway, the main lesson of this film is …. well, I don’t think there really is a lesson to be found, other than that it might be a good idea to take names seriously. I mean, Island of the Dead? Can anyone really be surprised that the zombies showed up?

Here’s The Trailer For F–k You All: The Uwe Boll Story

Posted on September 10, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Somewhere on this site, I once posted my opinion that Uwe Boll was the worst director of all time.

That, of course, was many years ago and I posted that before watching Ulli Lommel’s Zodiac movie. At the time that I posted that, Boll was mostly known for directing movies that were based on a video games. A little bit later, Boll would get political and direct films like Assault of Wall Street and that led to some critics saying that perhaps Boll wasn’t as bad as they thought he was.

Myself, I stand by my original claim. Uwe Boll was the worst director of all time. I say was because he’s apparently retired from filmmaking. Before he retired — and this is actually really neat — he challenged some of his fiercest internet detractors to a boxing match. Many of them accepted, not realizing that Boll was an accomplished boxer before he became a director. Say what you will about Boll’s films but I imagine that, by literally beating the crap out of some of his critics, he got to live every director’s dream.

Anyway, there’s a documentary coming out about Uwe Boll. It’s called Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story. I may or I may not see it. Here’s the trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vIbflVSLyA