Poor, Very Poor

Rating: 4/10 (19 April 2007)

This was a film that I really wanted to see vampires V's werewolves, in a titanic struggle for the end. Kate Beckinsale is tight leather dark and Gothic Sounds good doesn't it? That's what I thought. And whilst this isn't the worst film I've seen by any stretch it missed something the O word originality.
The story is simple. The war between Vampires and Lycan's (werewolves to you and me) has raged for hundreds of years on the dawn of the awakening, the fiendish Lycan's plot to kill to Vampires once and for all and there's some tosh about a pure cross blood line of the two species and Beckinsale getting off with a Werewolf.
But the film is so done before Attractive woman spray painted into a leather one piece? The Matrix.
Double Handed Gun Play? See John Woo.
Vampires fighting with swords? Blade.
High Angle rainy shots? Bound.
Music? Matrix.
Plot twists? Jackanory It's all so done before and often better.
That's not to say the film lacks charm or style. It doesn't but like most else in the film what it has it borrows in spades and for the most part it has been done better and more expensively elsewhere.
Beckinsale is sexy and this is probably one of her best roles yet, but Bill 'Love Actually' Nighy is so miscast and the guy from Snatch even more so.
What they have done is take elements from bigger films and throw them together but with less of a cast and even less budget.
Like those jeans you bought down the market. It may say Armani. It may look Armani. But deep down, you and everyone else will always know that's is nothing but a cheap knock off.
Which for some people is fine but not to my taste.