Silly but smart. And fun too

Rating: 6/10 (28 September 2011)

Vampires and werewolves and Kate Beckinsale in skintight rubber. What more could you ask from a movie? Now nobody is going to confuse Underworld with any kind of work of great cinema. But for what it is it works. Yes, the whole thing is rather silly. At times it is very hard to take the movie seriously. So don't bother trying to take it seriously, just enjoy it. Silly vampire movie that it may be Underworld does have some brains to it. The vampire/werewolf back-story mythology is worked out very carefully. The movie's not just vampires and werewolves brainlessly slaughtering each other, there's actually a reason they're slaughtering each other. Much of the back-story is not revealed until well into the movie so you've had time to build your own ideas of what's really going on, who is good and bad, what is right and wrong. Then the movie springs some surprises on you and puts a whole new spin on things. And then the vampires and werewolves resume slaughtering one another.
Beckinsale, lovingly photographed with as many butt shots as possible, is the glue that holds the movie together. There's some rather silly stuff she's forced to say and do. Some of the movie's dialogue is rather laughable. But Beckinsale makes it work. She brings an air of seriousness to the proceedings. But not too serious. A movie about a thousand-year war between vampires and werewolves can't be too serious. It needs to be fun. And this movie is. More or less. There are pieces that don't work. One acting performance, that of Shane Brolly as the vampire Kraven, is rather disastrous. The performance is off, the character is off. It's as if Brolly is acting in his own little movie. And his movie is much worse than everybody else's. But the rest of the cast performs admirably. Kate's great in her role of Selene, a vampire whose mission in life is to seek out and destroy Lycans. By Lycans I mean werewolves. The movie insists on calling werewolves Lycans because I guess it sounds cooler or something. Whatever. Michael Sheen makes for an excellent antagonist as the leader of the werewolves. Scott Speedman is appropriately flustered as a human caught up in the middle of all this nonsense. And Bill Nighy gets special credit for his performance as vampire elder Viktor who doesn't look too good when awakened from his long nap. Nighy deals admirably with one of all the all-time movie prosthetic/makeup jobs. The movie looks terrific with some dazzling visual effects, great sets and wonderful costumes. The story takes a little while to get going and has its ups and downs. But it eventually pays itself off pretty well. In the end there is really no ending at all, just a setup for a sequel. This type of thing I generally despise but here I'm actually looking forward to seeing Beckinsale shoehorn herself into that catsuit for some more vampire/werewolf shenanigans. Underworld is by no means a great movie. But its got enough fun and, especially for its genre, enough smarts to make it worthwhile. And it's good enough to make you want to jump back into this world again.