There's barely an original moment in Underworld, and sadly those parts that are derived from elsewhere in motion picture history (that is, all of it), are derived without wit or feeling for their antecedents or the genre. I have a feeling this film would never have been made were it not for the Matrix. It basically is the Matrix, only with werewolves and vamps, and a blue wash over all the cinematography rather than a green one. So we have a hard-arsed chick in a tight patent-leather cat suit toting a sub-machine gun in each hand in a subway station, driving performance sports cars absurdly fast, performing aerial flips and other acrobatics. Only she's a vampire. With a laptop. We have perpetual rain: we have the trademark Wachowski straight-down shot of rain falling away from the camera onto parked cars in a narrow alley. There's a big final punch-up between two indestructible foes in a great big puddle.
But while it rips off the Matrix's visuals, Underworld has neither the wit - the tongue-in-cheek film noir; the fairly well spec'd cod philosophy - nor any of the style: Kate Beckinsale is no Carrie Anne Moss, having about as much sex appeal as a Tupperware lunchbox, and I'm afraid to say the all-important fight choreography *really* blows.
The bits that are original, sadly, tend to foul up the rest of the picture. To wit: pitting the "lycans" (nice try, by the way, to make werewolves sound hip. Didn't work) against vampires misses the fundamental point of both genres, which is the need-to-sleep-with-the-light-on-afterwards factor: they're supposed to GET US. And DRINK OUR BLOOD. In Underworld they're knocking six shades of hell out of each other (with guns... GUNS?? VAMPIRES WITH GUNS? What the hell is going on?), so rather than being terrifying, it plays out more like a moodily lit feature-length episode of the World Wrestling Federation. You don't really care who wins as long as there is damn good fight. But, as noted, the fight choreography is Woe Ful than Wo Ping.
There's zero chemistry between any of Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy or the other one and Kate - it's understandable, fellahs; it's hard to love an airtight plastic container.
Sophia Myles plays a decidedly plot-functional blonde vamp-girl who pops up at critical moments to push the narrative along, but doesn't end up having much to do with anything. I think she's rather petulantly sent to her room just before the climax, and you never see her again. Since she was about the most interesting part of the picture, that's a pity. For my money, Myles would have been a better female lead than Beckinsale.
A special "opportunity knocks" award should go to Bill Nighy, who's been underachieving in British TV dramas since 1979 or so, never showing up in anything of note, who finally snags a peach of a part in Love Actually, and now you can't get the old buzzard off your screen - a fading rock star there; a sleazy Tory MP in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet; a lecherous 19th Colonel in He Knew He Was Right and a now a thousand year old vampire uber-lord in Underworld, and ALL of them portrayed as exactly the same character! Even Kevin Costner would be impressed with that!
Not sure what he would have made of the rest of the film, however.
Olly Buxton
