Review: Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003)

Solid story, generic execution

Not a bad film by any means, but with a lot of flaws. Whilst it's foundations are superb with it's vision of Gothic grandeur and historical mythology, the film unfortunately falls short because of it's ultimately generic execution. The story is fantastic- Romeo and Juliet with vampires as suitably described by the filmmakers. A centuries old war between vampires and werewolves which spills forth into our present day world (the city in which the film takes place is never revealed but it is European, probably Budapest or Hungary). The writers have done a great job fleshing out a history for the plot and weaving in a lot of historical myth and legend which gives the story a lot of strong background, and I was very impressed as it works a treat.

The acting is also superb all round, most standout being Micheal Sheen as Lucian and Bill Nighy as Viktor who have fantastic characters and really play their parts well. Kate Beckinsale was also very good in the lead despite her unoriginal role as Selene- an expendable "death dealer". Of course all the characters themselves are unoriginal but the actors really give them high class quality which is very appreciated, all their talents make up for it.

Now on to whats wrong with the picture- which is everything else. The visuals and design is what makes it lose marks- there is just nothing original or unique here whatsoever. The style is clearly lifted from The Matrix, and whilst it worked in those films well here it's just tiresome. The vampires are high-class aristocratic wearing Gothic gowns and other cliché attire that is now associated with them, sipping wine, wearing black leather, big boots, long flowing leather jackets; Selene wears skin-tight leather and wields dual guns and jumps and back-flips all over the place in slow-motion, guns fire all around and people fall and fly high with hidden wires. Wev'e just seen it all before, and done better. This has all been done to death ever since the first Matrix film came out and here it's just yet another poor imitation. Given the solid and original background story for this film I was hoping for an equally rich and diverse style for the look as well, and sadly all we get is a tiresome Matrix rip off. It really does lower the quality of the film, really. As a designer myself I was really hoping for something cool, they could have had a lot of fun in the design phase sculpting a world which houses the great story but unfortunately is just exactly the same as the dark, gloomy and rainy world of Matrix and The Crow, with a hint of Blade. I know it's hard these days to come up with something new but still, there was a good opportunity here to put in a fresh spin, a comic-book style coolness here but they opted for the safe Matrix style slo-mo and leather costumes rip-off which so often plague our screens. People seem to love it, I really am tired of it.

Directing again is so-so. Whilst Len Wiseman does a decent job on his first directorial debut there's still a lot of improvement that can be made, though kudos to him anyway for doing well on his first try. The choreography is decent though the action scenes as I mentioned earlier are dire- everything looks cliché and at times awful, they really should have thought about it better. The effects look dumb and the werewolves in particular look terrible. The transformations are really cringe-worthy and the actual creature suits are equally cheap looking (some scenes are an absolute joke). Worse still are the performances of them- the creature performers half the time just waddle around and the animatronics hardly move at all making it look even more dumb, and the fights involving them are really painful to watch, especially when there have been a ton of good similar werewolf films like Dog Soldiers which did a better job. The vampires again just act typically cliché, snarling and jumping- we've just seen it all before so many times. Some of the CGI effects are on the bad side but thankfully the computer effects are kept to a minimum- director Wiseman opted to shoot everything practical, and whilst this is great as everything looks raw and gritty I just wish the werewolf suits and acting was better so it would all work together. Again better directing would have masked the low grade suits, but unfortunately everything is on show.

All in all an entertaining movie with a solid story that is really not bad at all for a first entry in a propose trilogy by a first time director. Whilst I enjoyed delving into the world I just wish it was realised better, there was ample room for scope but they went with a cliché Matrix design both in look and vibe which I really didn't like at all. If only they did something more original, as the story is so well done they really needed the universe to be equally good too. Still, I look forward to the ongoing saga as the plot is interesting and is now just getting started.

4/10