Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter U

Ultraviolet (2006) is nothing to do with the TV series of the same name. The Americans have modified an old virus and release a version into a CGI world which has created haemophages, a.k.a. vampires. There's a resistance movement fighting a blood war with government forces, which are trying to wipe out the vampires. Agent XPD154 is given the job of delivering a case containing a weapon. But Violet the vampire takes her place, slays lots of guards and escapes with the weapon.
   Told not to open the case, Violet does so and finds a child inside. The child, called Six, is supposed to be carrying the equivalent of haemophage insecticide. But Garth, a vampire boffin, finds that the kid is no use to the vampires and he has a shelf life of about 8 hours more. The kid contains a tracker and he's grabbed.
   The kid contains an antigen which could kill every human on the planet. He's clone 6/8 and his 'father' wants to hold the rest of the human race to ransom to keep them in order. The kid croaks. Violet is shot but Garth brings her back. The kid wrote down the basis of a cure for the haemophagic virus so Violet goes after him.
   Millions more guards are slain, and also the kid's 'father'. Violet, a frustrated mother, brings the dead kid back to life. He tells her there's a cure for her condition and she tells him she knows.

Unbreakable (2000) is a weird effort, in which Samuel L. Jackson (he of the tedious Barclays ads) plays a bloke with brittle bones who's obsessed with American comics. He thinks there should be an opposite of himself; someone in perfect condition who's never ill and who can't be injured, like Bruce 'Wimpy' Willis. And so, we are expected to believe, Jackson makes planes crash and burns down hotels and derails trains until he comes across Willis, the sole survivor of the train wreck, who, he believes is a sort of super-hero and saviour of the human race!

Under Siege (1992) Steven Seagal plays Corey Ryback, a former US Navy Seal, whose unit was wiped out in Panama. He's currently serving out the last of his 20 years as a cook on the battleship USS Missouri. Pretending to be organizing a party for the captain's birthday, terrorists take over the ship and prepare to nick the nukular weppns. Cmdr. Krill, Ryback's enemy, has him locked up but he outsmarts the men sent to kill him.
   The head bad guy is a lunatic whom the CIA tried to kill after they lost control of him. He does a crazy act for the Pentagon to make the US military think he plans to fire off the nukes rather than sell them. He intends to load the nukes onto a captured North Korean sub, which the CIA paid him to sink. A Seal team is sent to retake the ship with an air-strike as back-up.
   Ryback is stuck with the stripper from the cake. He contacts the Pentagon with a sit rep then rescues some of the crew. Krill tells Ryback he plans to drown the prisoners in the foc'sul to divert his attention. The sub wipes out the Seals' choppers so the Pentagon orders the air strike. Ryback attaches a home-made mine to the sub and prevents it from submerging.
   Krill can fix the sub but Ryback's team shells the sub and sink it. The bad guys launch a couple of missiles at Honolulu. One is shot down but Ryback has to stick a knife into the top of the head bad guy's head, after a lengthy punch-up, to get the destruct code for the other one and save the day.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) Steven Seagal plays again Corey Ryback the former US Navy Seal turned chef, who sorts out terrorists. This time, the US military launches Grazer One, an orbiting weapon disguised as a weather satellite. Ryback and his niece just happen to be on the train, which is hijacked by bad guys led by the nutter who created the satellite, who has faked his own death. He has a band of mercenaries led by a grim-faced, grey-haired bloke.
   The nutter gets access codes from 2 air force officers of ATAC before they are chucked off the train. The plan is to hack into ATAC, using a system which can't be detected while it's moving with the train, and gain control of the satellite. After causing an earthquake in China, the nutter invites bad guys around the world to contribute one trillion dollars to pay for the destruction of the Pentagon and its nuclear reactor, which will take out the eastern seaboard of the USA.
   Ryback gets out a warning then he starts killing the mercenaries with the help of a black porter from the train's crew. He does some hanging by his fingertips from a cliff before getting back on the train, which is put on a collision course with a gasoline express among Dark Territory canyons, where radios don't work.
   Ryback and his ally have to save his niece and split off the part of the train containing the surviving prisoners. Ryback gets to have a duel with the grey-haired bloke then escape dramatically from the huge train wreck, writing off the nutter in the process.

The Underworld (2003) Vampires & werewolves (who used to be their daytime slaves) have been at war for a millennium. The vampire Selene finds herself in the middle of a shoot-out in a subway system when lycans try to grab a human called Michael Corvin, the Candidate. She takes charge of Michael after he has been bitten by a lycan, who gets a blood sample, which proves that Michael is the goods.
   Michael escapes from the vampire mansion. In 2 days' time, it's the full Moon. Craven, the current head vampire, claims to have killed Lucien, the head werewolf, 600 years before, but he did a deal with him. Selene wakes Victor, the vampire who turned her, because she suspects that Craven is in league with Lucien. Victor doesn't believe her.
   Lycans wipe out the vampire Council from Europe. Selene brings Victor proof. Michael is a descendant of Corvinus, the first true immortal, and the key to creating a vampire/werewolf hybrid with the powers of both. Victor tells Selene to kill him. Selene learns that Victor, who killed his own daughter for marrying Lucien, also killed her family and blamed their deaths on werewolves.
   Craven back-shoots Lucien and there's a HUGE battle in caverns. Selene turns Michael, creating the hybrid. He isn't able to see off Victor, but when Selene slices half of Victor's head off with his own sword, that's it for him.

The Unknown (2005) recycles the Jaws plot. The white man, after gold, saw off the Indians and the creatures they called Takahey. Cue a bunch of poachers in the woods. One of them wakes up after being clonked on the head to find the others dead. The mayor of Pine Tree is worried about the effects on tourism of a rogue bear in the woods. The Injun on the sheriff's team, Eagle Heart, goes for a look around.
   Meanwhile, 2 final year schoolkids, Richard and Jay, take a couple of girls into the woods in search of material for a paper on endangered species which will let them pass biology. Richard gets to take an up-close picture of a brown bear. The mayor says, "No reporters!" and the sheriff tells Ed, the poacher, not to go back to Eagle Mountain; which is exactly where he goes with some more bozos.
   The poachers plan to kill Eagle Heart if they come across him. One of them is sent back to the jeep for more booze (with an empty gun) and guess what happens to him! Eagle Heart finds a dead bear pinned to a tree as a warning and tells the kids to get the hell off the mountain. He tells the poachers to do the same so they tie him up as bait for the monster.
   The kids fail to get out of the woods before dark and meet the creature. Another poacher is taken out and Joe shoots the other survivor. Jenny runs into Joe. Eagle Heart is suddenly running around free again. Joe shoots Eagle Heart and Richard shoots Joe with the Takahey lurking nearby. Jay gets the creature on videotape but the two lads submit a not very good term paper to their biology teacher and use the video to stitch him up as a hoaxer, who took pictures of someone running around in a monkey suit. Which solves the problem of not frightening the tourists away.

U.S. Marshals (1995) recycles allegedly The Fugitive plot. A driver not looking where he's going causes a repo guy, Mark, to crash, he has a gun in his tow truck, the Chicago cops take an interest in him and find he's wanted for 2 murders in New York. Tommy Lee Jones, in a chicken suit, leads his team of U.S. Marshals on a bust and he gets the job of escorting Mark to New York on a flight full of convicts.
   One of them tries to shoot Mark but blows out a window. The plane's landing becomes a crash into a river, Mark escapes and Marshal Sam calls up his team and goes after him. Sam is told that the 2 men Mark killed were CIA agents, and he's saddled with Special Agent Royce. A long pursuit goes into and out of the swamps, and Mark gets away after ambushing Royce and putting 2 slugs into Sam's vest.
   Mark gets help from his girlfriend, Marie. He's out to get whoever set him up and clear his name. CCTV shows that the official story about the murders is rubbish. Sam's boss confronts the Feds she is told that Mark was part of a team trying to bust a Chinese spy ring run by Mr. Chen.
   Sam follows Chen's contact to a cemetery, where Mark turns up and grabs a messenger for the American traitor; only Chen shoots the guy. Mark does a runner and there's a big chase, during which Royce kills one of Sam's team, so he's the bad guy. Mark escapes on the roof of a train but he's located on a freighter and shot by Royce while having a scrap with Sam.
   Mark is taken to hospital, where Royce tries to finish him off. But, luckily, Sam has realized that Royce is the traitor and he gets to shoot him.