Not real imaginative or good

Rating: 2/10 (31 March 2006)

Essentially this is a Romeo and Juliette story with vampires and werewolves (imaginatively rechristened "death dealers" and "lycans")and they use guns instead of swords. The vampires are still dressed like leather bar hookers and the werewolves, excuse me, "lycans", look like homeless derelicts on steroids - "urban feral" if you will.
For some reason, vampire clans always seem to lounge about in palatial, Gothic mansions and sip wine or blood or what the hell ever, and just generally do their best to impersonate French nobility with their idle chic. These vampires are no different, despite the fact that there is a rabid army of computer generated dog-men out there wanting to tear them to ribbons. One vampire, played by Kate Beckinsale, (I'm tempted to call her "The Littlest Death Dealer") sees that an eternal life of posing awkwardly on baroque furniture is going to get them all killed for good and does her best to warn the predictably disinterested elder of her clan that something bad is about to happen.
One, two, skip a few, there's some twists and turns, people get betrayed, love is found, blah, blah, blah.
All in all, the whole thing is uninspired. The art direction is stereotypical. You've seen the Gothic mansions, the gooey sewers, so forth and so on before and better in other movies. The acting is not horrible, but how good does it have to be when all the actors do is howl or bare their fake looking fangs? The action scenes - typical MTV, quick edit, see nothing sequences. The wire work is laughably bad and should really be accompanied by a badly synched dub-track. The direction is a pitiful mess. While Len Wiseman may have been trying to capture the dark, Gothic feel of the Underworld, I think he probably should have listened to his cinematographer when the gentleman said, "We're gonna need more lights." Of course, maybe Len was hoping that if we didn't see anything, we wouldn't realize just how bad it is.
I give it 2 out of 10, because the ten year old inside of me keeps chanting, "But vampire fighting werewolves is COOL!" Maybe, but this movie isn't.