It's got Kate Beckinsale in it. What more incentive do you need?

Rating: 7/10 (25 July 2006)

Imagine you're a student of medicine, studying in a foreign country. Because of the fact that you're only a student, you don't really have much of a life outside the hospital, and you're there for basically fifteen hours a day. Now imagine that you discover that there's a whole other world overlaid against your own, and that the two dominant species of that world are creatures of myth and horror who have been engaged in war for the past six hundred years, and that recently you've become the central focus of their war, and both sides are out to either catch you for genetic experimentation or kill you.
Unfortunately for Michael Corvin, it is exactly this series of events that take place. Heading off to work one evening, he is caught in the middle of a vicious gunfight in the subway system of the Hungarian city, Budapest, between a group of Vampire 'Death Dealers' (sorta like the Vampire version of SWAT) and a group of Lycanthropes (werewolves  Lycans, for short). This is merely the first in a series of events which will turn his life upside down, for to win the war, the Lycans require Michael's blood, and the Vampires require him dead.
Selene has been a Death Dealer for the past three or four hundred years, ever since her family was killed and she was inducted into Vampirism. For hundreds of years she's fought the Lycans, who she believes to be responsible for her family's demise, with a single minded hatred. But now she's discovering things about her Vampire kin that are tearing down all her truths, and completely changing what were once incorruptible loyalties. And then there's Michael Corvin
Underworld is a stylishly cast action flick, with plenty of tense action sequences and blood, and yet it suffers from that unfortunate affliction which besets so many action movies  lack of storyline. There's plenty of possibility in a movie that almost makes the two hour mark, and yet there's no real development of any of the characters beside Selene, Michael and Lucian (and even then, there's disappointingly little). There's no real development of the plot, and some of the performances are less than impressive (case in point: Kraven, the Vampire Regent).
Yet put aside the failures in the plot and you have a highly enjoyable action flick, and, of course, Kate Beckinsale (who spends most of the movie wearing extremely tight Matrix style leather which leaves nothing at all to the imagination) to drool over. Recommended.