What is it about this movie that brings out such contempt?

I'm currently reading a book about how the early action heroines like Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson influenced future action heroines like the women in Charlie's Angels and Ripley in Alien. The book also analyzes modern (as of 2006) action heroines and audience reactions to them.

Although Ultraviolet does seem to follow most of the rules forced upon action heroines (sexy, strong, being maternal by protecting a child), the big no-no it made was that Violet beat up a bunch of guys and didn't herself get her ass kicked really hard at least once.

Compare this with Kill Bill. Granted, Kill Bill was a billion times better, but The Bride never beat up men with her bare hands. The two drag-out knock-down fights she has are with women. And the one person that captures her and comes the closest to killing her is a man. The Bride literally got the tar beaten out of her before she got to Bill. That woman was shot in the head, cut, shot with a double barrel of rock salt, raped and buried alive.

Although Violet loses a few fingers and gets cut up a bit in the climax, she was just too invincible. She didn't have what I call a "Rocky Moment". There was that one scene where 6 gets taken away and they shoot Violet, but it wasn't earned. They should've had her going down fighting to protect the boy and failing, not just giving up.

In almost every action movie there's a scene where the lead gets their ass beaten so much it looks like there's no possible way they could get back up. The audience will then WANT them to get back up. And when they do we want them to win. Think of the scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis is picking glass out of his feet. Or in Batman Begins when he gets set on fire and has to call Alfred to come pick him up (love that scene!).

Now, from a technical standpoint, Ultraviolet had a lot of problems. The CGI wasn't very good. The soft focus was a problem. The fact that her clothes/hair/glasses change color was nice, but had no point. The vampire angle was the silliest. You can't introduce vampires and not have someone bite someone else and drink their blood. Even the stupid ass Twilight movie managed to get at least one scene like that in.

But in my opinion, the biggest problem was that Violet wasn't vulnerable enough. They made her too tough. That and Cameron Bright is a robot.

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IMO is the lack of any coherent plot. Actually the lack of any plot at all. I mean I could understand that IF 'Ultraviolet' were an EXPERIMENTAL film, but when we are talking about a 100% commercial flick then what I am expecting to see is at least some coherency. I am not asking too much, Do I?
'Ultraviolet' is only one absurd fight sequence after another absurd fight sequence and so on. Besides it includes a dark plot that apparently involves the doom of the "hemophages" and then it's about the doom of human beings, and everything has to do with a lethal virus or something.
Plus the dialogues are frankly ludicrous, like when the machine is scanning Violet searching for weapons and what it says is something like this: "The number of weapons found is.... MANY!!

More Hollywood rubbish 2/10 (1 point for the pleasure of watching Milla Jovovich, 1 point for some of the visuals)

I thought the acting was poor and the writing/dialog/story were bad, but what really bothered me was how every aspect of he film was ridiculously over the top. Bright, vibrant colors, that change for no discernible reason. Completely bizarre costumes that appear to be worn more for appearance than function. Action sequences, that take place on the ceiling and walls. Fight sequences, with dozens and dozens of useless henchmen/guards/soldiers, who stand there and let Ultraviolet hack them to pieces. Not to mention the ridiculous scenes where attackers symmetrically holster their weapons and/or those who are killed strike a stupid pose before falling to the floor. We've got a dangerous <whatever> running around, wiping out our endless forces, so let's all stand around her with our weapons pointed at her face instead of shooting her dead... What's the worst that could happen? Oh, she'll pull out magic dimensional sword and cut us all down in the blink of an eye. Oh well, we'll get 'er next time! We've got a chaingunner in a helicopter who's unloading thousands of rounds and still can't hit a damn thing, then he waits for Ultraviolet to make a move before reloading his weapon, only to die when she jumps a motorcycle into the helicopter and shoots them dead. I could go on and on, but that's where I stopped watching the movie this afternoon. Everything else is fuzzy from my last viewing. You could pick a scene and I'd probably have something unflattering to say about it.