In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission (2014)

A mercenary for hire, wanting out, is hired for one last mission. But things go crazy when a portal opens up and he gets sucked into the magical medieval ages.

REVIEW: I have a deep, dark, secret that I need to confess - I'm a bit of a fan of Uwe Boll movies. I have a few of his films on DVD and Blu-ray, including the first In the Name of the King and the three BloodRayne films, so it's not surprising that when I discovered that my mother had recorded this film on her DVR that I'd want to watch it. I had already told Jeff, the B-Movie Shelf webmaster, that I was going to review some of Uwe Boll's movies for the B-Movie Shelf and here I am with In The Name Of The King 3: The Last Mission as the first review in my Uwe Boll review series. A bit out of order, sure, but that's nothing new with me.

If you read the plot for In the Name of the King 3, it seems simple enough, no? It also seems a tad bit familiar in a sense, don't you think? That's because essentially the exact same plot was also used for In the Name of the King 2: Two Worlds, which I have yet to actually watch myself. This one starts with Hazen, as played by Dominic Purcell, who is a Mercenary for hire that is in the process of accomplishing his current mission. Afterwards, we get to see a bit of his home life, which is not much to really write home about, just pretty much some generic filler stuff to pad out the time until we get to the meat of the movie, which begins when he wants to get out of the mercenary life but is contacted by his employer for one last mission, because...well...that's just how these things always goes in these kinds of movies.

The mission is to kidnap a couple kids and hold them until the employer can get the to the drop point. The mission goes according to plan, however Hazen discovers that one of the kids is wearing a necklace with a charm that looks similar to a tattoo he has. He takes the charm necklace, but before he can do anything with it a portal opens and sucks him up. Now he finds himself in the medieval age, proclaimed as the chosen one (again, as these things always go), and must fight for the side of good.

I have to admit I did not know what to expect with the story. The reuse of plot points from the In the Name of the King 2 didn't bother me too much because I have yet to see that film myself, so I'm not quite sure just how similar they are beyond reading the plot synopsis for that one. However I did come out of this liking In The Name of The King 3 a bit. Admittedly it's not the greatest, in fact at best it's only a decent time-waster, but it kept me entertained enough and that's what's important to me.

The acting I have to say is honestly not all that good - it was serviceable enough to get the job done, considering the kind of film this is, but nothing that I would consider good in any shape, way, or form, and some of it was made even worse by the terrible fake accents that a few of the characters went through the movie with.

While better than the acting and certainly serviceable, the action was only decent at best as well, and again, nothing that really stood out or popped - we have the basic sword-and-sandal fighting mixed in with some 'ok' hand-to-hand combat that was very obviously choreographed and they were just going through the basic motions they were told to go through. There's even have some combat with a dragon, although most of that just consists of everyone mostly running away while Dominic Purcell attempts to shoot it with his gun.

The special effects however were pretty good as far as direct-to-video movies go, but sadly there's just not much there, as at most you have the dragon that appears from time to time throughout the movie, but that's pretty much it.

Overall I would consider In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission a decent enough time-waster for those who like these kinds of movies, but nowhere near a great movie and ultimately pretty forgettable once all is said and done. Would I personally watch it again? Maybe if I ever purchased it for a cheap enough price and decided to have a series marathon of all three In The Name of the King movies. It makes for a entertaining enough rainy Saturday night movie to play drinking games with some buddies, but really nothing more than that. Uwe Boll continues to be somewhat entertaining, even when his movies seem to be getting more and more generic as they come out, so I'll remain a fan of his for at least a while more.

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward