Len Wiseman
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Connections, in both directions
First-time director Len Wiseman almost gets there, too, using "Romeo and Juliet" as a template and fusing medieval mythologies to video game sensibilities.
The press materials purport a “Romeo and Juliet” level of emotional depth to the piece, but that’s not translated to the screen.
Logic doesn't figure prominently in the latest entry into the horror-fantasy amalgam — a kind of monster-mash "Romeo and Juliet" featuring vampires and werewolves — which works to the good and bad of the story.
Passing itself off as a supernatural version of Romeo and Juliet, it benefits from pulpy energy and a nice sense of style, but its weak plotting and terminal poker face keep tripping it up.
With a plot that can be viewed as either a metaphor for race relations or a direct lift from Romeo and Juliet (or both, for that matter), Underworld is a hoary, wannabe epic that nonetheless springs to icily gorgeous life every time Beckinsale enters the frame.
(Nobody's complaining about that!) It's trying to be "The Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and "Romeo and Juliet" all at the same time, and it isn't 10 percent of any of those things.
Visually, it is "The Matrix."
Beckinsale's trench coat and double-fisted gunplay also echo "The Matrix" series - but then again, "Underworld" looks to combine and reinterpret mythologies, not wholly reinvent them.
Imagine if “Blade” sided with vampires instead of against, had plenty of help all with the same fashion sense, all lived in “Dark City” and fought everyone as if they were in “The Matrix.”
Underworld could easily have been patched together from clips from a hundred other films, from Dark City to Blade to, most tiresomely, The Matrix .
(Nobody's complaining about that!) It's trying to be "The Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and "Romeo and Juliet" all at the same time, and it isn't 10 percent of any of those things.
Bathed in television-blue and punctuated by splashes of red, "Underworld" borrows much of its look from superior entertainments — "The Matrix" hangs heavily over the film, as do "The Crow," "Blade" and countless Hong Kong shoot-outs — but director Len Wiseman brings a nice Goth flavor to the proceedings.
From Nosferatu to Blade, vampires have been popular movie characters, while werewolves have been less so.
Imagine if “Blade” sided with vampires instead of against, had plenty of help all with the same fashion sense, all lived in “Dark City” and fought everyone as if they were in “The Matrix.”
The look is a combination of Blade and The Crow.
Just why they want him especially won't be too hard to figure out (especially if you've seen Blade, which provides a similar hierarchy of races and moral grounds, except in that case, they're all vampires), but for Selene, it's a wrenching emotional ordeal, as she discovers centuries' worth of betrayals and deceptions.
Underworld could easily have been patched together from clips from a hundred other films, from Dark City to Blade to, most tiresomely, The Matrix .
Yet while the film is in harmony with the franchise’s established sense of style, unique world-building, and ferocious fight choreography, “Ballerina” is more than some cheap knockoff.
But, we must remember that this is Ballerina, not John Wick.
As the John Wick films have grown with each chapter, it makes sense to expand the franchise into spin-offs, including The Continental miniseries and now Ballerina, a (mostly) standalone feature focused on Ruska Roma assassin Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) following in Wick’s footsteps on her quest for vengeance.
If John Wick is willing to reign holy hell down on the men responsible for the death of his dog, imagine what Eva could do to avenge her father.
As it did with John Wick, the Ruska Roma has trained Eve well and even tattooed ominous Latin phrases on her back, too, in exchange for services rendered.
For instance, the original John Wick gave the title character 20 or so minutes for the audience to understand his heart before the intruders decided to kill his puppy.
The most obvious rip-off is "Live Free Or Die Hard," which did a much better job of managing a similar premise - powerful surveillance and command and control computers in the wrong hands.
Having tackled Rear Window in Disturbia , director D.J. Caruso (again with LaBeouf) seems poised to undertake North by Northwest this time, but the film owes as much to Enemy of the State (the phrase is actually used) as any Hitchcock fare, with a dash of Live Free or Die Hard thrown in for good measure.
For example, even as the movie borrows the traffic-light manipulations of Live Free or Die Hard and The Italian Job, its opening chase scene manufactures a few thrills of its own: The pacing, the sound, and the effects are all in the 90th percentile of such things, and the closing cars-vs.-hooks-in-a-wrecking-yard…
Listing the works that Eagle Eye borrows from would be too blatant a giveaway, but it's clear these guys watched Live Free or Die Hard and read Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy, mixed in with certain unnamed cinema classics, and decided that a good filmmaking method would be to ram all of these things into each other head first and see what emerged.
What's ironic is that the movie is reminiscent of the technological action angle of "Live Free or Die Hard", but what kept that action movie entertaining was Bruce Willis keeping even the most tense situations light, something that "Eagle Eye" sorely needs.
DJ Caruso has enjoyably preposterous material -- it's sort of like Live Free or Die Hard for the left wing -- and he approaches it with a portentousness that kills the fun.
For one thing, youâ??re never quite sure what time or place Underworld exists in â?? most of the production design seems borrowed from The Crow by way of The City of Lost Children, and the few normal people who turn up from time to time do so in order to flee in terror only moments later.
Bathed in television-blue and punctuated by splashes of red, "Underworld" borrows much of its look from superior entertainments — "The Matrix" hangs heavily over the film, as do "The Crow," "Blade" and countless Hong Kong shoot-outs — but director Len Wiseman brings a nice Goth flavor to the proceedings.
In between are tons of rip-offs of everything from The Crow to The Matrix to the leather fetish and arms of Blade to the sweaty bodice-ripping of Anne Rice to the Alien3 wall-crawling monster views of David Fincher.
The look is a combination of Blade and The Crow.
The squalid, burnt-out tunnels of the subway (where the lycanthropes nest) and the vampires� stately manse are gorgeous to behold, but much of the nonsense that goes on in them is woefully derivative of The Matrix, Blade, and The Crow, and Underworld is not as pleasing as any of those films.
The result is a vibe that’s part-Blade Runner (with more technological glitz), part-The Fifth Element (minus Gaultier’s flair) and effortlessly immersive.
Set in a dystopic 2084 that lifts an awful lot from Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and a pinch from The Fifth Element, Quaid's psychotropic journey from obliviousness to self-actualizing, anti-government insurgent feels right, but Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback's script rarely gives the viewer time to ponder this poor guy's exceedingly existential crisis.
With " Total Recall ," it's like it's trying so hard to be " Star Trek ," then switches gears and jumps to " I, Robot ," then " Minority Report ," then " Blade Runner ," then " The Fifth Element ," and the list just keeps piling up.
You’ll also find similarities to the campy sci-fi flicks “Judge Dredd” and “The Fifth Element.”
If The Fifth Element comes to mind while watching Wiseman's efficient, action-packed retake, well, yup, those floating cars and multitiered, M.C.
Quaid lives in a metropolis that looks like Wiseman took two cityscapes from “The Fifth Element,” stacked one on top of the other around the labyrinth from “Cube,” and then bow-tied the whole thing together with the multi-tiered freeways from “Minority Report.”
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
influenced Ballerina (2025)
Themes Visuals Plot
That said, it would be unfair to go into Ballerina expecting John Wick 5, especially when it’s being delivered to us hot off the heels of arguably the best entry in the franchise with Chapter 4.
…such as a sequence in a neon-lit club reminiscent of a similar scene in the magnificent John Wick: Chapter 4…
John Wick Chapter 4 saw The Boogeyman using a shotgun that fired explosive shells, but the flame thrower sequences are somehow even wilder.
The movie, set between chapters 3 and 4 in the Wick series…
While it experiences a few missteps and doesn’t surpass John Wick: Chapter 4 (what movie could?), it still delivers the explosive and stylish action fans expect from this franchise.
Essentially John Wick Chapter 3½, the ferocious femme-driven spin-off Ballerina—nestled chronologically between the penultimate Wick installment and its four-peat grand finale…
COLUMBIA PICTURESColin Farrell takes on one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signature roles in the new "Total Recall."
We figure out way too early that factory worker Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell) might be married to someone (Kate Beckinsale) with an agenda that involves a little more than shopping—although it’s not clear where these people shop, because director Len Wiseman (“Underworld”) is content to offer a two-dimensional world about which we don’t know a lot of details. “Total Recall” 2012 is a popcorn movie, and we’re not supposed to ask what the butter is REALLY made of.
The 1990 sci-fi classic “Total Recall” has been ‘rebooted,’ ‘re-tooled’, ‘re-imagined’ and ultimately stripped bare of the creative boundaries, social commentary and originality of its predecessor.
CAST: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston DIRECTOR: Len Wiseman LENGTH: 1:18 What's the difference between the "Total Recall" in theaters today and the original film from 1990?
In 1990, director Paul Verhoeven and various screenwriters (including Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the pair who penned the original 1979 Alien) took this premise and expanded on it, turning the short story into the feature-length Total Recall and having their protagonist actually visit Mars rather than just remembering it.
Another possible connection disappoints when Eve meets a young girl in the Chancellor’s crosshairs. Could “Ballerina” provide Eve with a Newt-like figure to tap her maternal side, a la “Aliens?”
For reasons that are much too complicated for this film's target fan base, unsuspecting doctor Michael (Scott Speedman, borrowing Sigourney Weaver's haircut from "Aliens") holds the key to victory for both sides.
Black Widow (dir. Cate Shortland, 2021)…
If the concept of a ballerina assassin feels familiar, it’s because Red Sparrow (2018) and Black Widow (2021) both got there before.
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
influenced by Underworld (2003)
Characters
Her only rivals in that department are, of course, Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld vamps-vs.-werewolves…
The still-lovely Jovovich appears more than ever to know, like her counterpart Kate Beckinsale in the “Underworld” movies, that these movies are pulp comic gunk, but that’s no excuse for the low level of effort she puts into it.
More importantly, unlike Kate Beckinsale in the "Underworld" films (not to beat up on those clinkers once again), who goes through her paces with a palpable sense of condescension towards the material, Jovovich still seems to be having fun with the material and that feeling can be sensed by the audience as well.
Dulled by the gauzy dark blue, gray and green color scheme that became the rage after "Blade Runner" (1982) for conveying lurid futuristic landscapes, "Underworld" is a hybrid horror and action film that succeeds as neither.
Stunningly crafted and photographed, the rainy, near-colorless city of "Underworld" (created by production designer Bruton Jones) evokes elements of Tim Burton's "Batman" and Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner."
Atomic Blonde (dir. David Leitch, 2017)…
Ballerina joins the ranks of bad-ass femme fatales like La Femme Nikita, Hanna, Atomic Blonde, The Old Guard, etc.
De Armas is a whirlwind buzzsaw like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill and Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde.
The 87Eleven stunt team behind all the Wick films previously mastered the expression of feminine physicality in Atomic Blonde as well, so it’s no surprise they nail the way in which Eve must feel both overmatched and underestimated during her combat sequences.
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016)
Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
influenced by Underworld (2003)
Plot Characters
Unlike someone like Kate Beckinsale , whose general contempt for the “Underworld” franchise can be detected whenever she is on screen, Jovovich is clearly having a blast doing these films.
As with the recent edition of the similar Underworld franchise, the film begins with a recap of what’s gone on before, which seems less designed for newcomers than viewers who’ve actually seen the previous entries but can’t remember a thing about them.
For what it’s worth, this saga is a brand-leader in its field – consistently more entertaining than the Underworld films and leaving non-starters like Aeon Flux, Ultra Violet and Priest in the dust.
Somewhere around part three or four, however, the dumb fun turned into incomprehensible nonsense, weaving plot strands that involved clones, superpowers, implanted memories and various other unnecessarily convoluted, hacky plot devices that rendered the series almost as confusing and inert as Underworld.
With six evils tucked under her belt, Jovovich surpasses Underworld‘s Kate Beckinsale, who has only made five to date, and the Alien franchise’s Sigourney Weaver.
…a brief glimpse on a television of the Buster Keaton gag in which a two-story house collapses around him from the film Steamboat Bill Jr. offers an inkling of the general frame of reference for Ballerina’s headspace.
As On Her Majesty’s Secret Service heats up inversely to its setting’s temperature, Ballerina cooks once it decides to decamp to the cold-climate hidey-hole for a cult of domesticated but still deadly assassins who demand eternal loyalty and punish any derivation with death.
It echoes Assault on Precinct 13, The Raid 2, and most recently, Monkey Man.
Resembling a rejected retreat for Mr Freeze from Joel Schumacher's Batman And Robin…
A test was reminiscent of New Police Story but Jackie Chan's influence is felt every time someone lamps someone with whatever they light upon first.