Underworld (2003)
Directed by Len Wiseman
Vampires and werewolves have waged a nocturnal war against each other for centuries. But all bets are off when a female vampire warrior named Selene, who's famous for her strength and werewolf-hunting prowess, becomes smitten with a peace-loving male werewolf, Michael, who wants to end the war.
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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 .
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.
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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.
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."
For one thing, youâre 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.
And on that very night, she met and was turned by an Elder, that is, a pureblood vampire named Viktor (Bill Nighy, looking nearly as cadaverous as he did playing a Keith Richards-ish rock star in 1998's Still Crazy).
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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."
And the CGI werewolves are so bad they make us yearn for the days of latex and air-bladders in An American Werewolf in London and The Howling.