Review: Fuck You All: The Uwe Boll Story (2019)

This documentary on the controversial film maker Uwe Boll gives us an interesting glimpse into Boll’s early years in the business but might leave some fans disappointed.

As a huge fan of Uwe Boll’s output (the good stuff) I was happy to cough up the $6 or so that it cost me to rent this on Amazon Prime. The documentary takes us back to look at Boll’s first couple of movies produced in Germany and how he then relocated to Canada to start making films there, before notoriously getting into his infamous video game adaptations like House of the Dead and Blood Rayne. We also get some brief glimpses behind the scenes of some of his more interesting, though ironically less financially successful offerings such as Rampage and Assault on Wall Street.

Having watched all of Boll’s best complete with audio commentaries I didn’t learn much new from this. There are good contributions from some of Boll’s regular stars such as Clint Howard, Keith David and Michael Pare, who all clearly love the guy, and his long time partner in production Shawn Williamson. Brendan Fletcher chips in too, but I’d have liked to have heard more from him and also something from Dominic Purcell and Edward Furlong would have been nice.

Boll speaks for himself and is as colourful and inspiring as ever, but certain contributors, such as the bint who wrote the screenplay for Blood Rayne feel like a waste of screen time, not least because she only repeats the same crap she’s spewed on youtube already, not to mention the fucking disgusting and vapid old hipster cunt who founded the Razzies, a few of which Uwe has been awarded. Who cares what that useless, bearded prick thinks about Uwe Boll or anything else for that matter?

It was interesting to get a sense of Uwe’s genius when it comes to raising the money to make his films, like the time he agreed to make two films for the price of one when he did Blood Rayne 3, filmed alongside Blubberella, and, as it turned out, Auschwitz as well. It’s also cool to hear how he goes about making them in such a workman like manner, knowing that what he was making wasn’t necessarily as good as it could be, but preferring to get on with it and get the damn thing in the can, rather than waste time trying to make everything perfect. After all, some of his best films were made in a few weeks. Hell, his last film, Rampage President Down, was shot in less than a week, so there wasn’t time to fuck about. Incidentally, President Down turned out great, so check it out if you haven’t already.

We get something of a re-tread over Raging Boll, where Boll took on a handful of nerdy critics in the ring and kicked their asses to promote Postal, the best of his video game adaptations by a mile, it’s actually pretty watchable. Incidentally, the aforementioned documentary from 2010, Raging Boll, is far superior to this one, so if you haven’t seen it, I’d easily recommend that over this lesser effort.

Also in the documentary, Uwe introduces his latest venture, the trendy German restaurant in Vancouver, while those who know him best hint at the possibility of a come back, which I really hope I live to see.

As they say in the documentary, those who don’t like him, just don’t know him. Crap and yet profitable video game licenses aside, Boll made some of the best and manliest movies of the 2010s (Rampage 2: Capital Punishment, Rampage: President Down, Assault on Wall Street) and put out the original masterpiece Rampage, along with the prison drama Stoic and the superb Attack on Darfur all in the same year of 2009. How many other directors can boast two great films and one okay film all in the same fucking year? Sadly, the collapse of the DVD market meant that Boll’s career was cut short when he was in his prime and we got cheated out of a sequel to Wall Street and all the other great films Uwe would’ve made if he’d had the chance. Yet apparently Escape Plan 3 is still worth making. What a fucked up world.

Final verdict: a worthwhile watch for Uwe Boll fans, but nowhere near as good as the other Boll doco Raging Boll (2010).

6/10