Being regarded as the worst in any field can have its perks. Just ask the controversial, critically detested, German filmmaker Uwe Boll (BloodRayne, In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale).
Writer-producer-director Boll has been making video game adaptations for roughly five years now, a period in which he’s come to be regarded in critical circles as one of — some would argue THE — worst filmmakers of all time.
But here’s the upshot: the more they put him down, the less Boll cares. Instead of taking the criticism personally, as he once did, the new film Postal, based on the first-person shooter video game of the same name, is Boll’s way of thumbing his nose at critics.
The social and political satire takes aim at everyone, as Boll explains in an interview with Metro, and is virtually guaranteed to leave audiences of all races, religions and nationalities offended.
“What they think about me they think about me,” Boll says of his critics.
“I cannot really change it. If you read reviews of movies like House Of The Dead and In The Name Of The King, I have a feeling that people don’t really look at movies anymore and they judge the movies like the worst of the worst, but if you go a little into detail and ask people was it really worse than Jumper or 10,000 BC or tons of other movies that come out each year? Normally the answer is no.”
To say Postal pushes buttons, perhaps to the limits of poor taste and beyond, would be an understatement. The film satirizes the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, rips Muslim extremist groups, religious cults and religion in general, as well as poking fun at Nazism in Germany — and that’s only in the first half.
Boll, who has literally fought his critics in boxing matches — he trained for the fights, they didn’t — and pummeled a few of his harsher editorial adversaries, argues that there is a place for what he calls this type of ‘absurd’ comedy.
“I think movies like Life Of Brian would never get financed in the world today and I felt that, and I still feel that, Postal is one of the rare, ruthless, anarchistic comedies made. In that context it’s good that a movie like Postal is made.”
Others might disagree, but Boll, whose past use of German tax loopholes to finance his films, cementing his maverick status and allowing him to continue producing, really couldn’t care less. Now that those tax laws have been tightened, placing limitations on write-offs for money-losing films, Boll has sought other means to make his movies such as cutting his budgets.
For the 42-year-old, that change in approach has signaled an opportunity to make more personal films, ones that may once again incur the wrath of critics. Not that he seems to mind.
“I’m planning to make a movie in the Sudan about the genocide … diving into the Darfur and Sudan world without having a lot of American stars in the movie.”
The world waits with bated breath.
