A-Vamping We Will Go

Rating: 7/10 (7 November 2003)

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but a good while ago, vampires stopped being hideous corpse-rats and aloof Mitteleuropean aristocrats with funny accents. In many cases, they even stopped being bad guys. Your average vampire these days is slick, sexy, and angst-ridden, living an eternal Gothic bacchanal. What, precisely, is so inherently sexy about a reanimated corpse has always escaped me. I blame Anne Rice. Or maybe that Keifer Sutherland movie. Anyway, that particular strain of vampire fiction has always impressed me very little; nothing wearies my patience quite like some pretentious navel- gazing twit done up in black, pausing to murder a cute starlet before whining about the dreariness of existence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, somebody hand me a wooden stake.
That said, I have to admit that `Underworld' is a pretty decent movie. It treats its vampires vs. werewolves war scenario with a trifle too much seriousness, and borrows heavily from other movies in its visual vocabulary, but it throws enough talent at the problem on both sides of the camera that it pulls through. Besides, it can't help but be better than the leaden, preening `Interview With the Vampire'.
Our bloodsucking heroine is Selene (Kate Beckinsale, very fetching in a patent- leather bodysuit), who is a `Deathdealer', one of the leather-trenchcoated button men of the vampire world. The Vamps, we learn, have been duking it out for centuries with the Lycans (a fancy name for your garden-variety werewolf). Throughout, the human race has been oblivious to the fighting, which apparently means ignoring a couple of gory firefights a week. The exact casus belli here is unclear for much of the movie, and even the characters don't really know since, as Selene tells us, researching history is forbidden. Boy, that's never a good sign. The war is as much a conflict of dueling fashion sense as anything else: the Vampires are sleek dilettantes who loll around on vintage furniture in grandiose mansions, sipping blood from crystal goblets and exchanging sardonic smirks, while the Lycans are hairy and unkempt rowdies who live in the sewer and amuse themselves by beating the snot out of each other. The Vamps dress in fancy evening gowns and tailored leather; the Lycans' idea of high fashion is an old Bundeswehr jacket and no shirt. The Vampires have guns with lots of polished chrome compensators and electronic doodads stuck all over them (they do target practice on Renaissance busts); the Lycans are fond of AKs and oversized Desert Eagles. Interestingly, the Lycans all appear to be male. Can't imagine why. Anyway, while out snuffing a couple of Lycans, Selene notices that they seem to be following Michael (Scott Speedman), a medical intern at a local hospital, and also discovers that the sneaky wolves have developed special vampire-piercing bullets made with irradiated liquid sunshine. She decides to check into Michael more closely, over the opposition of her vampire colleagues, and discovers not only the roots of the war, but also that everything she has believed all of her undead life is, er, inaccurate.
The movie is set in a Stygian and rainy City With No Name, located somewhere in eastern Europe (`Underworld' was shot in Budapest and Prague). Director
Len Wiseman films the place with a lot of gray filter and shadow, which gives all the characters the wan, ashen appearance of the walking dead. The atmosphere is a definite plus for the movie, though it's hardly original. If vampires were real, this is where they'd live - they wouldn't stand out for not having a tan. Kate Beckinsale gives a subtle and effective performance as Selene, though I'm not sure if it is the one intended. She seems to be written as a steely warrior, but Beckinsale comes off too delicate and waifish for that. Frequently in her combat scenes, she looks disconcerted, uncomfortable, and a little scared. She's competent but not confident, and seems like something of a shyly charismatic tomboy who's a vampire but isn't really into it. When she walks through the grand hall of the vampire hangout, the in-crowd vampires just stare at her with what might be disdain, and she doesn't give them the time of day (well, night I guess). Selene is, essentially, an orphan a couple of times over, and Beckinsale's performance gives a definite sense of the vulnerability this entails. Frankly, I thought all this made her a more interesting and appealing character, whose courage comes from control of fear, not absence of it, but I'm not sure it's what the creators had in mind. And you do sort of keep expecting other characters to put their arms around her and say, `There, there, Sweetie, werewolves aren't really real, they're just make-believe.' Wiseman selected quite a good cast for the movie, even in small roles, and this helps immensely in making `Underworld' entertaining. Speedman is fine in his secondary role, though he and Beckinsale's inevitable romantic bonding is a little unconvincing. As the Lycan boss, Michael Sheen creates a compelling portrait of ferocity that becomes oddly sympathetic, particularly when his grievance against the vampires is given an airing. The only weak spot in the cast is Shane Brolly, who plays the cowardly but devious vampire chieftain Kraven (the legendary vampire warrior-king he is playing Prince John for is called `Viktor'. Such is `Underworld's idea of symbolism). The fact that Kraven is something of a sissified drama king does not excuse Brolly's hyperventilating all his lines like he's climbing Everest or something. Viktor, incidentally, is revived as a desiccated mummy in the course of the story, and Bill Nighy plays him with eerie, amoral dignity even through many layers of prosthetics.
The ending leaves room for a sequel, as is increasingly common among action movies, all of whom have decided to at least leave the option of creating a franchise. I mean, pretty much everything gets a sequel these days. And you could do worse, I guess. After all, how many books did Anne Rice write?