It's just allright for me

Rating: Null/10 (20 April 2004)

Underworld is one of those movies you want to see but dread mainly due to the cover on the box. It shows Kate Beckinsale all decked out like Trinity ready to leap through the air with the help of wires and special effects. The movie's problems are not that it steals from the Matrix, but are more basic. The plot had the chance to really lure us in with an almost Romeo and Juliet type romance, but sadly it doesn't get enough attention. Selene is so rigid, you expect her to snap in two every time she walks. Michael Cravin comes across as a naïve child who will believe anything and sympathizes immediately with any sort of sob story. An attempt at an end reel plot twist falls flat on its face because instead of the twist anchoring our emotional hopes on one side or another, it introduces yet another side and makes us dislike two characters we already mistrust even more. The one actor who's the saving grace in this film is Michael Sheen who plays the part of Lucian, the big dog of the werewolves. His eyes convince me that he is not doubt a were-something and if I saw him coming after me, I would wet myself and then run. We are given five whole minutes to understand why Selene fights the werewolves (brought about in the clichéd why are you fighting them dialogue) with such a passion and in those same five minutes realize her love for Corvin. Of course Selene wasting six werewolves single handedly immediately follows that. The movie has little emotional attachment from its audience. It's entertaining and the vampires and werewolves are very modern. The vampires take on more of an Anne Rice-like portrayal sitting around drinking blood that looks like wine in an extravagant old house. They dress pretty and could pass as fashion models for Old Navy commercials if they weren't dressed in black all the time and got a little more sun. The werewolves are fast and agile but they don't look quite right to me, most of them look like blue chow-chows, not werewolves. The whole look and feel of the movie is of course very gothic, as we wouldn't expect anything else. My biggest pet peeve in the movie is that we are supposed to believe that Selene is a killing machine yet whenever she fires a gun it flails in her hand as though it was a salmon out of water. I don't know how she manages to hit anything at all and I wonder if it's too much to ask Hollywood to train actors to look like they know what they are doing when they use firearms. Not a bad movie, rent it sometime if they are out of what you really want.