The Matrix Re-Vamped

Rating: 7/10 (11 May 2004)

Movie Review: Underworld
Directed By: Len Wiseman
Written By: Kevin Grevioux, Len Wiseman and Danny McBride
Starring: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Michael Sheen, Shane Brolly and Bill Nighy
As soon as you have seen the first five minutes of Underworld, you realise that this is a film that owes The Matrix and Blade a huge debt. While this should have been immediately obvious from the trailers and movie posters featuring Beckinsale in skin-tight PVC, twin pistols and a Trinity style haircut, it is also in the mise-en-scéne and execution of the cinematography. All out gun battles are frequent, and all that is missing is the bullet-time. This raises the question: why have vampires and werewolves fighting, and then have them firing guns at each other?

The fact that this is a fictional world (allegedly of its own devising, but I will come to that), is a plus in many ways, but it hits a trap that many fantasy/horror/sci-fi films fall into in. The director and writers are obviously well at home with the world that they have created, but they rarely (if ever) take the time out to explain this world and its apparently complicated political situation to the audience. This is a major flaw, and it is not until almost halfway through the movie that the audience has any idea what is actually going on.
Apparently, the writer saw this movie as `Vampires and Werewolves do Romeo and Juliet'. Let me state right now that this film bears little resemblance to the Shakespeare play, and that it is only the `Star-Crossed' lovers that remain. A tarnished representation of one of the greatest love stories of our time, perhaps. However, the romantic sideline seems crammed in somehow, as though the filmmakers realised that there needed to be some substance to pace out the next confusing gun-battle. A major flaw of which is that the vampires and werewolves look virtually identical, so that it often hard to see who is shooting who.
What is interesting is that the role-playing games company White Wolf Inc. attempted to sue the film for copyright infringement. There certainly is a striking resemblance to Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Don't worry, any knowledge you may have of the games' setting won't help you any, through the mysterious plotline. That said, if they had just got the licence and made a Vampire: The Masquerade movie, the film would likely have been immeasurably superior. That could have become/been a high class cult-movie. Underworld, however, looks destined for the £5.99 rack.
Overall, Underworld is a flawed, if enjoyable, action-romp. Probably best enjoyed when in a no-brainer mood. Beckinsale is as lovely as ever, and the promise of her in a PVC suit is probably the major incentive for teenage boys to watch the film. There are several nice action set-pieces throughout the film, but the overall effect is confusing and disjointed.

STORY: 6/10 DIRECTION: 4/10 PERFORMANCE: 4/10 OVERALL: 5/10
RECOMMENDED TO: Teenage Goths, people who play White Wolf RPGs and drunken twenty-somethings bored in Blockbuster.
DON'T WATCH WITH: Mum, Werewolves or hardcore White Wolf gamers.