A comic book movie not based on an actual comic book – that should say volumes about UltraViolet. And while it is not even close to the Uwe Boll crapfests we’ve been inflicted with of late, only those viewers that can enjoy the action sequences without trying to make a lot of sense of the undeveloped story are going to enjoy this film. Let’s just call it martial-arts porn: only enough story to get you between the heavily choreographed fight scenes.

In the world of UltraViolet, the human race is involved in a war that has lasted for many years. It started when the military establishment started mucking around with the virus that causes vampirism to make a super soldier. No super soldier was created, but they managed to make the disease more virulent and it got out among the population. Any contamination by a carrier’s bodily fluids was enough to spread the disease.

People who contracted the disease were called "hemophages." Outwardly hemophages only have pronounced canine teeth to mark them. Unseen are superior intelligence, strength, speed and acute senses. There is never any real discussion of what the problems of the "disease" are, as there is not even any indication that the hemophages bite anyone for blood. They are just better than humankind. No apparent downside other than the light sensitivity that some hemophages display.

But of course people are paranoid and hate things different from themselves, so a campaign was started to round up all the hemophages, study them, and ultimately wipe them out. As the movie opens the numerically superior humans have all but destroyed the physically superior and more technologically advanced hemophages. All that is left are scattered pockets of resistance.

Here is where we meet Violet (Milla Jovovich). Violet contracted the disease early. In the events that followed she lost her husband and her pregnancy was involuntarily terminated by the despotic health ministry that grew up as the leaders of the human side of the "Blood Wars." Violet managed to escape the ministry and now is one bad-ass and beautiful hemophage warrior.

Her current assignment is to steal a new weapon developed by the health ministry which supposedly will end the war once and for all. She is told not to open the case containing the weapon. But if you are going to put a butt that nice on the line you want to know what you’re risking it for. Inside the case is a child. Violet’s maternal instincts immediately kick in. And even though she knows this child could mean the end of her kind, she makes the decision to protect it against both the hemophages who would destroy it and the humans who would use it.

The rest of the story is simply enough to hold together a series of choreographed fights where Violet is always grossly outnumbered by either super-human hemophages or storm-trooperesque ministry soldier yet consistently emerges the victor.

Director and screen writer Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) did an admirable job making the fight sequences taunt and stylish in the Matrix fashion, but when it comes to getting any kind of actual performance from his cast, he fails miserably. His screenplay is so full of holes that you’ll often feel you came into the middle of the story and it leaves about as much unanswered as it explains. The "surprise" ending is like a bad boxer: it telegraphed its intent to throw that weak punch long before it came.

Visually I think Wimmer was trying for a comic book art feel to the picture. Sadly it came off as a murky mess that looks like bad computer-generated imagery. You often wish you could see more of the world of UltraViolet, but it generally goes by in an incomprehensible blur.

Leading lady Milla Jovovich’s action movie pedigree is now without question. After The Fifth Element and the two Resident Evil films, we can believe her as the kick-ass-and-take-names action heroine, but in UltraViolet the visuals are so murky that it often could have been about any actress on the screen. The movie is at its best when Ms. Jovovich is moving her lithe body in combat, but the rest of the movie it is best to just concentrate on her gorgeous navel, which is almost constantly on prominent display.