Kate Beckinsale in leather

Rating: 6/10 (13 March 2006)

When i tried to watch this movie the first time i didn't even get past the first fight scene. I thought it felt like such a cliché i didn't even want to see the rest. But now i gave it a second chance. And well, not as bad as i expected the first time around, but i don't know if it's that good either.
The style of this movie is sort of the classic "bits and pieces". Meaning that the director and script-writer has taken small pieces of movies they like and put it together into a movie of their own. Now and then i just felt like "Oh, that's The Matrix" and "Oh, that's Blade" and so forth. Not that there is anything wrong with that necessarily as long as you have something of your own to add to the mix.
So, what worked? Well some of the action scenes were pretty good. The actors took the whole thing the way they should, the acting didn't become neither pompous nor silly like it so often does in vampire movies. And admittedly Bill Nighy is always a joy to watch, as is Kate Beckinsale in tight leather (although a different kind of joy completely). Also, as someone else mentioned in their review, the lack of comic relief was very positive. Nowadays it seems nobody can make an action or horror movie without pushing in stupid one-liners and quips. Here though the mood is kept throughout, which is refreshing. And what didn't work? Well, the whole story is a bit silly really. Vampires fighting Werevolves, and nobody noticing apparently since there is no police and seldom any regular people in the city where this whole thing is taken place. Also the fight scenes again, while some of them were well done, many of them lacked the real nerve. When the fighting is done between two different kinds of monsters i want to see fierce fighting, animal rage and carnage. Here we get some sort of martial arts Matrix style mixed with a little biting. Which really takes the edge of.
To sum the whole thing up i found this movie to be less bad than i had anticipated. Certainly no masterpiece and absolutely not a classic, but still a decent entry into the worn genre of Vampire movies. Also any Vampire movie that excludes the whole eastern European accent thing more or less completely gets at least one extra point.