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| Underworld |
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  (5/10)
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Runtime: 122 |
| Public Rating: 7.84 (186 votes) |
Director: Len Wiseman |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Fantasy |
Year: 2003 |
| Writer(s): Danny McBride |
| Distributor: Screen Gems |
| Reviewed by: Greg C. |
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Underworld is a film full of ideas, potentials, visuals, and moments that just scream "cool." Unfortuanatly, it's also a film full of missed oportunities, hammy dialouge and some of the worst acting in a genre picture in quite some time. Overall, "Underworld" shows that the picture's director, Len Wiseman, really knows how to manage his budget, stretching his tiny 20 million dollar budget for all that it's worth and delievering a picture that looks like it cost three times that much. That said, the film’s premise, a story about a secret war between vampires and werewolves, needs a better treatment not just in the script area where the film commits some of its most fatal mistakes), but also there are times where you get the feeling that the movie could become epic if it had just gotten the proper budget.
The plot sort of follows Selene (Kate Beckinsale, looking absolutly amazing and the only one who comes out of this movie unscathed), a vampire whose job is to hunt down and kill every werewolf they can find. On one such skirmish, Selene discovers that the werewolves are following a human, named Michael (Scott Speedman, adequate at times and just pointless at others). As Selene tries to figure out why, she uncovers a plot that threatens the vampires’ way of life.
There’s more to it than that, but the movie just doesn’t warrent a full-detail analysis. Partly because I just don’t care enough to write all that out, and mostly because the film itself doesn’t seem to know what the plot is half the time. So many little subplots and minor characters are introduced, but very few, if any, are resolved. The main points of the film are lumbered through, delievered very rarely with any sort of dramatic weight or conviction, and lacking any sort of coherence. Most of the time we get hints at other pieces of plot that feel as though they could flesh out this world, but they’re either ignored or vaugely mentioned a few more times before launching into the film’s next montage of people driving in cars, people walking in doors, people walking through rooms, looking out windows, etc, etc. The film just never gels the shots together to build any sort of atmosphere.
The film has a few things going for it. The opening is great, promising a lot more than
what the movie ultimatly delievers. Beckinsale pretty much saves the movie from better
total bollocks, as does the Vampire leader, Viktor (Bill Nighy, whose presence gives the
entire movie a welcome dose of class). After a confoundingly clunky first act, the movie
picks up steam midway through the movie when it seems like the *real* plot of the
movie takes hold. Michael Sheen is effective as the movie’s sympathetic villian, Lucian (leader of the werewolves), even though for a majority of the movie he has very little to do, and doesn’t even survive to the films non-involing climax (which features a kill that will have Equilibrium fans crying foul).
But even though the film picks up halfway through, what we get in the end feels in no way what the past two hours we were watching was leading up to. It’s not a twist ending, either, no, it’s the same problem that plauged “The Hulk”-- a tacked-on epilouge that makes it possible for them to make a sequel. All that’s missing from the ending is a note from the producers saying “Well, we ran out of money, so instead of showing you what happens, we’re going to introduce a whole plot thread that we’ll work out in the sequel.” This movie was made with a sequel in mind, and not in a good way. Movies that are potential franchise-builders always end their movies with potential for more movies, but the good ones do it in a way that the film can stand on its own in case the movie doesn’t take off. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, X-Men, Spider-Man, they all had openings for sequels to follow, but those first enteries have closure and real endings. This movie doesn’t. Like Dreamcatcher, it blows its cinematic load and then cuts to credits directly from that scene.
For a movie that claims to be about vampires battling werewolves, there’s actually precious little fighting going on in this movie. While I can understand the intent of not wanting this movie to be wall-to-wall action, and I can appreciate that, but if they want to spend time developing the plot, they need to be sure they know what the plot is in the first place. Also, when the action is that sparse, one would naturally assume that the
filmmakers would take extra care to make the battles energetic and meorable. Unfortunatly, that is not so-- other than the opening battle, the action sequences are unforgivably short and murky. I understand that this was due to the low budget, but when you don’t have a budget to show everything you want to, you have to get creative as to why your scenes are so brief. Equilibrium did this well, with gun-kata giving that film the leeway needed to start and finish a fight scene and still make it memorable. Wiseman, who is a relative newbie behind the camera, directs the movie well enough, but he’s a director in search of the right budget. He’s economic in that he makes his film look like it cost more than it did, but he also shoots himself in the foot on the creative end-- to save money, almost all the cool ideas involving the werewolf/vampire fights only have the chance to appear once (especially the ultra-violet bullets that the werewolves use on the vampires, resulting in an über-cool death), but these ideas only appear at the beginning and at the end. Also, the cinematography, while very gothic and stylish, needs to pull back at times. I mean, what’s the point of having gorgeous women in tight leather outfits in you’re only going to show them from the shoulders up, not to mention obscured in shadow half the time?
This film has many really cool ideas and moments, but sadly almost none of these ideas come into full frutation. Perhaps, when the sequel is made, which is likely after this weekend’s performance, they’ll have an adequate budget to properly explore this world that’s being attempted to be created. But story-wise and script-wise, this potential franchise needs a major overhaul, and it’s only one entry in.
Rated R for violence and language.
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