Slashing the scheme

Rating: 5/10 (2 July 2013)

After a bout of time-travel into the early days of Vampire-Lycan eternal war, we return to the slick black leather-clad present day of Selene (Kate Beckinsale), fanged Death Dealer, who happened to fall for half-vampire, half-werewolf Michael. Modernity, however, doesn't suit peace, as human kind discover the existence of both dark alley races, thus swiftly embarking on a genocidal judgement day. With Lycans all but extinct, the few remaining vampire covens retreat into darkness. Selene and Michael are among the few captured and tested upon in a private laboratory, where they spend most of twelve years. This ends when Selene is mysteriously unthawed from her cryosleep by an unknown force and soon escapes the laboratory, only to find herself in a brave new world...
The idea is pretty easily defined: transform Selene into a Resident Evil-type franchise, where the luscious gut-whipping heroine defines the series, with the base premise a welcome, but secondary pretext for gore, action and prolonged adoration for the main protagonist. Kate Beckinsale fits the mold pretty well, dominating with her ruthless twirling blood-letting personality. However, where Resident Evil seems to keep the story flowing, slowly extrapolating zombie Armageddon, Underworld seems afraid to limit itself to the underground war between vampire covens and werewolf packs, instead constantly changing the back-story. After a well-rounded initial premise, confidently wielded by the slim shoulders of Beckinsale, scriptwriters decided first on a cross-European wild goose chase, than transporting us to the beginnings for whatever pointless (if satisfiable) purpose. Lost in a way to further the concept story gods Len Wiseman and co decide to do a total makeover, disposing of the set storyline and bringing in a post-genocidal world, where poor vampires and werewolves are victimised by the nasty humans (yes, the question WTH? comes immediately to mind).
Barring how stupefying the storyline is, "Underworld: Awakening" does surprisingly manage to work quite well. At least as long as you utterly discard you acting senses (some of the performance err on the wrong side of atrocious) and limit your attention to the all-out action, ignoring the dumbfounded dialogue and connect-the-dots that make absolutely no sense. Throw in some overgrown werewolves and Beckinsale pirouetting in drastically tight clothing, somehow makes the whole affair less inept than it should be with the final battle one of the highlights of action movies of the past few years. The bulky brute Lycan that is the ultimate foe make the whole story more epic and memorable, than the intrigue deserves... I guess there is nothing that is so idiotic that a voluptuous chick massacring blood-hungry foes can't fix...