Review by Quin
There is a famous quote from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung that has always stayed with me: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Personally, I’ve always tried to remember this when dealing with difficult people. It doesn’t always help in the moment, but if nothing else, it serves as a good reminder of how I don’t want to be. Raging Boll is a documentary where this quote serves as a central theme, yet the quote is never even used. But clearly everyone involved could use a little self awareness, with a lot less ego, because pretty much everyone here is unbelievably guilty of projecting their own faults onto others.
Sorry if that all sounds a bit judgey or high and mighty, hopefully I’ll explain why I feel this way. In case the pun in the title went sailing over your head, this is a documentary about film director/writer/producer/sometimes actor turned boxer Uwe Boll. The super clever title is a play on the Martin Scorsese film Raging Bull (Which is about former Middle weight champion fighter Jake LaMotta and it’s my favorite film of the 1980’s.) The first half of Raging Boll is about who Boll is as a person and a filmmaker. We meet his family, who seem pretty normal, yet in the next segment he promptly starts talking about how messed up his childhood was – trashing them in the process. Upon further clarification, he says that he was lonely as a kid but found movies as an escape from this loneliness. It would seem that any feelings of anger he has for his family are no more significant than the rest of the anger that he has burning inside of him. See? Uwe Boll is raging. And he doesn’t want you to forget it for a second.
Boll is definitely a hard worker, after all he has made over 30 movies. Almost all of them have been universally panned. This has lead him to be known as the German Ed Wood. He has also been called the world’s worst director. But he keeps doing what he’s doing with no stopping in sight. Not even an online petition for him to retire can make him stop making movies. Uwe Boll obviously knows what we need to see at the movies and everyone else is wrong. Right? Well, here is where the second half of the film comes in… Uwe Boll has finally had enough of the critics (most of which are actually internet trolls pretending to be critics) and damnit, he’s gonna do something about it. Boll has trained as an amateur boxer and has decided that he wants to fight anybody who says his movies are bad. This is one of those good ideas on paper that you laugh at and say to your friends, “Oh man, that would be so great!” Laugh some more and then go on with your life. But Boll is a hard worker, a man of integrity and possibly a little manic – and he got a huge fight promoting company to back him and the contenders actually showed up. Some of them included a 17 year old web blogger, the CEO of Something Awful and a journalist for Ain’t it Cool News. One of his opponents remarks, “I feel like I’m in Rocky IV, but I don’t have a whole country behind me.” Neither does Boll, all he has is Golden Palace.
Basically, the whole fighting event gets way out of control and if you felt any bit of sorrow for Uwe Boll, that totally goes away. Then something surprising happens, you realize that this has been the world’s greatest anti-bullying documentary. It could even be called Raging Bully. But Raging Boll shows that there is an endless cycle that goes back and forth between the bully and the bullied (I’m only speaking of Boll’s situation here, not most bullying where there is a bully and a blameless victim… I just want to be clear.) The internet critics and trolls have truly driven Uwe Boll insane. He is a guy who would have been much better off not reading his own press. He even goes as far as to call his critics “Unhappy, jealous psychos, who need this to feel better.” But after pummeling a few of them, literally, he says, “There is a real world out there and it can hit you. So you have to be careful about what you say.”
Basically, this movie shows that Uwe Boll is full of contradictions and he seems like a big jerk. But to be honest, his critics seem like even bigger jerks. Uwe Boll is definitely not a good director, but he’s absolutely and without a doubt not the worst. He’s made a handful of truly unwatchable films, but his more recent stuff, while repetitive in theme, has gotten much better. He won’t be winning any awards anytime soon (except maybe a Razzie) but he is probably also here to stay. I think we even need Uwe Boll. I’d take him over Michael Bay any day.