Jason Statham's Only Video Game Movie Is Absolutely Terrible

Despite recent global successes from HBO's "The Last of Us" and Netflix's "Arcane" (which was canceled after two seasons), it's still a lot easier to find horrendous video game adaptations than ones worthy of praise. Whether it's Paul W.S. Anderson's barely mediocre "Resident Evil" series, the cheesy "Street Fighter" movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme, or the mishit "Doom" with Karl Urban and Dwayne Johnson, it's easy to understand why video game adaptations have been deemed "trashy" for so many years. The best compliment these movies and TV shows could hope for in the early days of the subgenre was being called a guilty pleasure — like the first "Mortal Kombat" flick.

But even among the most abhorrent adaptations, there was one headlined by the otherwise great Jason Statham: "In the Name of the King," and stood out as the worst of the worst. Based on Chris Taylor's 2002 "Dungeon Siege" game series, director Uwe Boll (who's been notorious for making some of the lamest and most appalling straight-to-video flicks) attempted to deliver an epic RPG fantasy on the big screen and failed in virtually every possible way.

"In the Name of the King" takes place in medieval times in the fictional kingdom of Ehb, following the protagonist, Farmer (Statham), who swears vengeance against the vile creatures of Krug after they kill his son and kidnap his wife. Naturally, there's an evil mastermind behind the Krugs named Gallian (Ray Liotta), a wicked magician, who wants to rule over the entire kingdom. Farmer, with the help of other humans and magical beings, needs to stop him no matter the cost.

Given Uwe Boll's reputation as a filmmaker (even before 2007), it's hardly surprising to any movie fan that "In the Name of the King" turned out the way it did. It's almost astounding that the director was able to get such high funding and lure in a pretty decent cast to appear in this absolute dumpster fire. The 2007 action-fantasy was in no way a low-budget effort. Boll had a budget of $60 million to make this movie (more than he was ever granted) and a rather sublime cast to work with, from which many might consider this film the lowest point of their acting careers.

Besides Statham and Liotta, the film also features Ron Perlman, John Rhys-Davies, Matthew Lillard, Claire Forlani, and even cinema legend Burt Reynolds himself. It's hard to imagine that any of these actors saw anything but a pay cheque in this project, and unsurprisingly, they evidently had little to no interest in saving this movie from becoming an utter failure.

The convoluted mess of the script, combined with terrible dialogue, laughable visual effects, subpar performances, and horribly executed action scenes, resulted in an epic fiasco both critically and commercially. "In the Name of the King" had only made $13 million at the box office worldwide and became one of the most loathed films among critics (currently having a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), in addition to making it onto Time's Top 10 Worst Video Game Movies list in 2008. Luckily, it didn't really hurt Statham's career as an action star, but it's understandable that the actor steered away from starring in another video game movie or TV show ever since.