Review: The talk started after the first trailer. 'Aw, it’s just a rip-off of Blade and The Matrix’, to which I said ‘So?’ Throw The Crow and Romeo & Juliet in there, as well. The teaser scene with the lovely Kate Beckinsale in the bell tower was enough alone to get me running to the theater. Ten minutes into the film festival screening, I thought to myself ‘if they can keep this up, we’ve got a film here’, but unfortunately they couldn’t. I have to congratulate the people who made the trailer for making Underworld look ten times better than it actually is.

I liken Underworld to Tomb Raider. The script is not good; it should have gone through a few more drafts to iron out some of the dialogue. I’m not saying that the Blade and The Matrix films don’t have cheesy lines; it’s just that Underworld takes itself too seriously to get away with them. The director is out of his league - although Raider's Simon West did have potential after Con Air - Underworld’s Len Wiseman proves that being a talented production designer does not necessarily give you the chops to be the main man. The look of the film is decent, but not much else. The most obvious parallel to Tomb Raider would be that its saving grace is the leading lady. Kate Beckinsale (who is even more stunning in person) shines as the leather clad vampire assassin Selene, but she doesn’t have anything to work with. Scott Speedman is his usual dull self as Michael - the Romeo to Beckinsale’s Juliet. Shane Brolly hams his way through the entire picture as the main villain Kraven. The paternal vampire figure Viktor played by Bill Nighy is passable, but Mark Metcalf he is not. The main werewolf Lucian, played by Michael Sheen, can hold his own, but is, of course, underused.

Also, the action sequences, which should be the film’s strength, are really not all that spectacular. Wiseman denies us the vampire/werewolf hand-to-hand that we would all like to see for lazy Ecks vs. Sever style shootouts. And his intention to stray away from most vampire conventions to as he put it ‘make them more reality based’ falls flat.

To be fair, besides Kate, the film does have other merits. The werewolf transformations are well done and the music mix fits the tone, but they are outweighed by the movie’s shortcomings. We’ve seen all this stuff before and Underworld doesn’t improve on any of it. I don’t expect it to do all that well based on the lukewarm – at best – reception it received at the screening, but to say that is to dangerously underestimate the tolerance of the masses.

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Copyright© Written By: Tom Servo
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