great werewolves, wimpy vampires

Rating: Null/10 (21 February 2004)

They did a great job with the special effects surrounding the werewolves (lycans). The Lycans pop out of their skins turning into snarling dogs. Why didn't they come up with something equally impressive about the vampires? The vampires are wimps, you wonder how they are on the verge of eliminating their enemies the lycans when it's obvious that the lycans are much stronger physically. Apart from the head vampire Viktor, who was quite a bit stronger than any of the lycans, all of the rest of the vampires wouldn't be anywhere without their guns and whips. It sort of reminded you of Blade II, where the vampires were basically marine commandos hunting an even more powerful predatory force. Also the two movies were filmed in Eastern Europe, so they had a similar dark iron-curtain feel to it.
Another problem with the movie was that there was so much double-crossing and double-dealing going on, it was hard to follow who was who. Also in many scenes where you got armies of vampires and lycans going against each other, it just turns into a ball of confusion as to who is getting shot by whom. But I guess it really doesn't matter, just as long as there is a lot of shooting going on.
Just a few of the nits about this movie. I liked it otherwise. It doesn't do much to advance the story about vampires or werewolves. Like you don't watch this movie and find out that they have some cool new powers that you never thought of before. In fact, the vampires seem to have less powers than they do in other movies.