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Picture from Milla Jovovich’s website: http://www.millaj.com/film/ultraviolet.shtml
One of my favorite “karate” movies in recent history is Ultraviolet! The star is Milla Jovovich. I was wondering is she actually knew her stuff so I started looking into her background. She (Milla) is a super model, actress, and singer that also practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. In her roles for Resident Evil and Ultraviolet she had to learn how to do the fighting moves for her parts. She did most of her own stunts in Resident Evil. Below is a video with one of her fight scenes. Find more information about Milla Jovovich here.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/zgYD1zna8H4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
One of the best scenes in the movie was when she had to fight the top floor fighters to get to the roof of the building. Although not many traditional martial arts moves were employed - She was able to move out of the way with graceful gymnast like moves.
For those martial arts purists out there, you might be saying, show me something that works! Well I have to tell you that I am used to the martial arts films of my youth were the master’s fight in the clouds!
Milla reportedly trained eight months or more for her fighting roles. I view this training akin to traditional karate/kung-fu katas (or dances with karate moves). One can make the argument (as I am) that learning how to do the moves for the movie scenes are every bit as hard (or more so) than the traditional kata.
The purists may still think that the katas show one how to fight whereas the movie scenes would not work! Wrong! (in my view) the katas generally are no better fighting then dancing... both are exercises but if you tried to fight like a kata - you would get your butt kicked.
I was not able to find a lot of information about the jiu-jitsu training or how advanced she was. The good thing about any self-defense training as well as athletic ability is people are more apt to successfully defend themselves in an attack!
I don't think most of the movie fighting would work as it was based on gymnastics as well as pulling from all martial arts, but it was sure beautiful to watch and better (I think) then the old karate movies. The old karate movies often would use moves that no one on earth could do. A recent example of that is from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - the fighters were flying though the forest as well as jumping over buildings (obviously hanging from a rope). There were unreal scenes in Ultraviolet but explainable by a gadget unlike the karate movies that would simply have one believe that all masters can fly.
As a sci-fi and karate movie buff, I strongly endorse Ultraviolet as a must see movie. I rate it four and a half flying side-kicks up! 
Picture from Milla Jovovich's website: http://www.millaj.com/film/ultraviolet.shtml
December 29th, 2007 at 2:30 am
Whoa! That’s fierce. I know nothing about martial arts…
December 29th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I enjoyed this movie, it was pretty good, although you could definitely see through the CGI effects.
Do you watch much Korean fighting movies? I really enjoyed Fighter in the Wind, although I am not sure what kind of fighting style that was.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
I’ve not seen Fighters in the Wind… I’ll look out for it though.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Fighters in the wind is the story about Kyokushin’s founder, Mas Oyama Sensei. I haven’t had the chance to watch the movie, but some trailers are available in the internet. I watched ultraviolet because of Milla :-p, although I don’t really enjoy the fighting scenes as much as you do, but I agree that flexibility is an advantage you can use in self defense.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Thanks for the info on the movie Charlie. As far as Ultraviolet – I guess you kind of have to suspend dis-belief
May 4th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
[...] site, MySelfDefenseBlog.comabout the fight senes Milla Jovovich had to do in her movie Ultraviolet here! Here is a sample of katas performed by the Kung Fu Femmes troupe at Las Vegas for your [...]
January 4th, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Milla Jovovich has studied taekwondo and is a 3rd degree blackbelt in this martial art
February 10th, 2011 at 12:10 am
Hi
I like Milla Jovovich, she is athletic and capable to play in that kind of role.
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