IWBVGFSYDHT: Far Cry 3 special edition

With Far Cry 3 so recently released we at Arcadian Rhythms thought it would be the perfect time to revisit a classic entry in the series.

But instead of going back to the original game that started it all, doing a retrospective on Far Cry 2, digging up one of the console iterations of the series or even looking at some of the Arcade ports, we decided it was time for another instalment of ‘I Watch Bad Video Game Films so that You Don’t Have To’: a breakdown of Uwe Boll’s 2007 film, Far Cry.

It all starts in the woods with some army guys running along in the dark. The scene cuts to two others who seem to have parked their cars and then taken leave of their senses as, somehow, they have allowed for someone to disable their vehicles… while they were in them.

It soon gets all Far Cry: Predator: Instincts (a prestigious entry in the game franchise) and the thing from the chase sequence begins picking off the soldiers. This is done as a grainy-cam shoot; think Predator but if Predator was done on a budget of about five pence.

To try and appease the audience: Udo Kier and opening credits.

In truth I would have been happy to leave this piece (and the film) at that and be done with it, but true to my artistic integrity I carried on watching.

An interesting fact about Til Schweiger: he is/was a comedian in his home country of Germany, which is pretty shocking given that the repartee he displays as the token Hawaiian shirt-wearing main character is comparable to that of a wet flannel. To be fair he is not given much to work with as the script is a stumbling, reanimated corpse of monosyllables. Til’s putdowns consist mainly of ‘Okay’, ‘Thanks’ and ‘Watch Out’.

It certainly feels like Uwe Boll was, as a fellow German, drawing on his own personal experiences when Til has to go out on a boat with some Americans and they act like douches. The problem is Uwe knows as much about writing a script as he does about pointing a camera so the whole thing is deliciously leaden. The actors go on about whales and Til looks utterly depressed – it is hard to tell if this is because of the scenario or the film he is in.

The film jumps back to Udo’s perspective where a Cheap Ass Ray Stevenson is having an argument with him. They chat about some genetically-modified soldier after something to do with the murder of the soldiers from the first scene. Cheap Ass looks moody, or perhaps constipated, but Udo totally doesn’t give a shit and paints a picture instead.

The film cuts to a Reporter talking about Udo Kier. It transpires that she is related to Cheap Ass RS’s Second-in-Command, Max. She has learnt all about this secret base by, get this, exchanging emails with Max.

Shockingly, Max gets caught.

The Reporter shows up at Til’s boat and starts sassing him. He is all like “I don’t know Max” and shit. He is totally lying; they were army buddies and had a safety word. Til also shows her some of his German comedian charm with a bit of slick face pulling and mocking of her grilling.

So they get onto the island and sneak into the secret facility. By sneak I mean the Reporter immediately walks into a patrol, who capture her and blow up Til’s boat.

Needless to say he is not pleased.

Til rescues the Reporter and the mercs give chase. The subsequent car chase is on a par with The Fast and the Furious if it were really slow and featured cars from a junkyard, all shot with a style that could be charitably referred to as ‘enthusiastic’. Watching a .50 calibre gun turret get taken out by a net is eye-opening.

Deciding that the gun versus net scene wasn’t audacious enough Uwe Boll then reveals the ultimate fuck-you to the audience. A helicopter joins the chase. In a fit of ineptitude the Reporter fires a grappling hook that goes through the roof of the car and connects with the helicopter. The car runs off a cliff and is hoisted into the air by the still-attached helicopter. The car with Til and Reporter inside then falls into a lake and, for reasons not immediately obvious, the helicopter spins out of control and blows up.

This is somehow awesome and shit at the same time.

Til and the Reporter get to a shed and immediately get undressed and have sex.

Again, somehow awesome and shit at the same time.

The film then cuts to the next day with Til and Reporter strolling along an open road on this top-secret, high-security island while the Reporter makes jokes about how rubbish he was in bed. Some mercenaries show up and, once they are overpowered, Til makes one of them strip off their clothes and demonstrates some more witty banter about how he meant for the Reporter to get undressed instead. Yeah, I kind of scratched my head at that one too.

After sneaking into the top-secret facility – that looks just like a lumber mill – Til makes the Reporter hide in amongst some nondescript barrels. Barrels of extreme strategic importance. Or at least I imagine they must have been as Udo’s team have a camera pointing right at them.

I can only imagine that the conversation when setting up this specific camera went something like this:

“Right, so we’re going to point this camera directly at these barrels full of cheese.”

“Why would we do that, Barry?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“But Barry, it’s only cheese.”

“Trust me on this one; remember that time on Hoth when you questioned putting harpoon guns on the back of snow speeders?”

“Well, yes, that seemed like a pointless endeavour.”

“And look how that worked out.”

“True. It’s your call then, Barry.”

Having decided that the film was insufficiently ruined, Uwe Boll introduces an unfunny fat guy who happens to be doing the catering for this impenetrable facility and comes in by boat. Til tries to attack the newcomer, but unfortunately the fat guy starts choking on a sandwich and Til saves him instead.

I think there was a boat chase scene after this but I faded in and out of focus for most of it and the next time I was really paying attention, the Reporter (okay, I went and looked up her character’s name on IMDb: it is Valerie) is with Udo while they watch a now-Mutantised Max beating the crap out of Til and Fatman Caterer.

Til appeals to Max by using the safety word they shared in the army. Max decides to free all the other mutants who take it upon themselves to kill all of Cheap Ass Ray Stevenson’s soldiers. It is like Universal Soldier 3 but less good and with more men in white make-up doing parkour.

Til ends up fighting one of the indestructible mutants and kills him with a buzz-saw. He uses one of his better quips and calls the mutant an ‘asshole’.

At this point the film becomes a blur of Cheap Ass and Til figuratively comparing penis sizes just before Cheap Ass gets killed by a villainess, who I should probably have mentioned before given that she is in the majority of the film but is so bland that she doesn’t really seem important (I couldn’t wring any jokes out of her part).

There is a standoff between Til and the Villainess, each with a hostage: Udo and Valerie respectively. Til gets shot but then mutant relative Max shows up, gets shot in the eye and then breaks the Villainess’s neck.

The Fat Guy, who I had managed to completely forget about, shows up in a boat and rescues Til and Valerie, leaving Udo to his fate at the hands of his mutant creations.

It is rip-roaring stuff. Really.

With the genetic mutants forgotten – even though there is no evidence that they can’t swim – Til and the fat guy get a new boat and share a recurring joke with Valerie about how rubbish Til is in bed. The Americans who want to see whales also show up to demonstrate Uwe’s skill at the long joke and it all ends in a stuttering, blubbering roll credits.

And that’s it. No punchline for the end of the film. I haven’t got one. Couldn’t even muster one if I tried.

Seriously, don’t even bother reading the rest of this piece expecting me to write something witty because it isn’t going happen.

There, I told you so.

For more in the I Watch Bad Video Game Films So That You Don’t Have To series, click here.