Underworld

I must admit to having my misgivings about this one and thankfully I was right to have them. While this is an entirely watchable film and has some great action moments in pure comic book form, it takes itself far too seriously and this is where it suffers the most.

Our story involves Selena (Kate Beckinsale), a ‘Death Dealer’, which is basically a soldier in the war against the werewolves. She has been hunting the werewolves in this fashion since becoming a vampire six hundred years before. When she discovers a human (Scott ‘REO’ Speedwagon) is being targeted by the ‘Lycans’ (the term derives from the medical term for werewolfism; Lycanthropy), she investigates and starts to learn some very interesting and shocking facts about all she has been told about her vampire heritage.

Suspecting that one of her clan is conspiring with the Lycans, she awakens the sleeping elder Viktor, who it is then discovered has reasons of his own for the secrecy behind the war.

And I think there’s some more.

"I want that Lycan’s head on a plate!"

It’s a bit silly, werewolves versus vampires. I mean, what’s next, Aliens versus Predator? It is absolutely choked with clichéd Gothic and New Gothic images which, regardless of the director’s vision to have this as something totally new and ‘not just a genre film’, make it look so much like any other bloody vampire movie. Black leather (skin tight, of course), dank corridors, bells tolling, rain-drenched city streets, long greasy hair, pale skin, overcoats, a Gothic manse, grey stormy skies and fog all turn up here at some point or another. Oh, cobbled streets too. There are images lifted directly from some films (Batman) and ideas pinched from others (Judge Dredd) plus still leaving room for almost exact duplicates of other whole sequences (The Matrix). Let’s not forget the roomful of decadent Matrix rejects quaffing Absinthe and looking brooding. Overall it is so heavily clichéd that when the real action is taking place it is overshadowed by the film’s own wankiness.

One thing I’ve always wondered about, well two things actually...

a) Why are vampires so acceptably racist? They all hate humans, yet so many humans dress up in black and makeup and pretend to be them. You don’t see vampires dressing like regular Joes. (Especially not in films like this).

b) Why do all vampires love death metal rock music? Surely there are those who enjoy Mariah Carey or John Farnham or whatever?

If you have the answers, please don’t email them to me. I really don’t care.

While I didn’t expect much, there were some cool moments in the film, but even try as I did to see this film on a comic book level, it just wasn’t quite there for me. This is nowhere near The Crow, nothing like The Matrix (as much as it obviously wants to be) and certainly nothing like anything Tim Burton has made. For this first-time director, while attempting an A-grade film he’s managed a top class B-grader. The cast should give that away for a start. Full of no names and TV stars. The only draw card is Kate Beckinsale and, as much as it breaks my heart to say it, she’s not done much that hasn’t been panned. She’s got a range and does well here, but there should have been a funny edge to this film. For us to take it seriously, there should have been an element of not taking it so seriously by the creators.

So, it’s a cool action film, though there’s little here we’ve not seen done before. No doubt there are already hordes of black-clad vampire wannabes salivating at the prospect of Underworld on DVD and good luck to ‘em, but for those usually so entrenched in the intellectual, this film is a bit of a misnomer.

There can be little to discredit the shooting of this film – it looks great. Although heavily and repeatedly dunked into blue and green filters the film stills look amazingly clear and clean. No artefacts about, a huge widescreen aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (with enhancement) and some extremely comic book shots add up to a very nice transfer. Much of this film is shot in the dark (of course) and manages to show shadow detail clearly without trace of grain. Blacks too are true, although this very important factor in such a dark movie has no doubt been applied maximum attention.

The use of CG is pretty apparent most of the time as the majority is fairly pissy, though to the film's credit some of what I took to be CG turned out to be men in animal suits or actual stuntwork. Not sure if that’s good or bad, actually, now I think about it. However, the film overall does look great, but clocking in at 116 minutes overstays its welcome by about 20 minutes.

Sound seems to make so much of a film like this more interesting, so no detail has been spared to make it as full-on as possible. This means tons of sound effects draped over every scene and running rife through the surrounds which work hard to keep up with the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. The subwoofer too heaved a sigh of relief when the film was finally over. Happily, there is even that classic sound effect of a wolf calling thrown in as perhaps some throwback to the olden days of cinema, cartoons and The Brady Bunch.

Music is scored by Paul Haslinger and this is effectively corporeal or ethereal as required, dramatic, choral or classical as well. A fairly good score, though one that is swallowed up by the plethora of metal tracks by bands like A Perfect Circle, Renholder, Puscifer and The Damning Well. David Bowie even gets a look in at one point. Dialogue is clear, mostly, and there are numerous accents from around the world here which all come across okay. The scripting gets a little clunky and cheesy occasionally, again taking itself too seriously, but for the most part that just helps the comic book feeling the writer and director are striving for (and not always getting).

There are a huge variety of extras here to keep the disc full and represent excitement for the hungry masses. However, the menus are static images and the main menu has some of the pissiest animation I’ve yet seen on a DVD. Even no animation would have been better than this rush job.

Anyway, first of all we get a bunch of trailers that includes the Underworld one as well as Spider Man 2, Hellboy, The Medallion, S.W.A.T. and Dolby Space When is that film coming out? It turns up on everything…

The audio commentary by the director and the writer is just self-serving nonsense and not worth the listen unless you really love this guy’s work. The second audio commentary is even less enthusing, being the technical one, but this is at least more interesting than listening to grown men pat each other on the back. Get over yourselves guys.

Five featurettes turn up next and for these I’m going to humourously substitute underwear for Underworld:

The Making of Underwear (see? Funnier already) runs for 13:03 and is the usual kissarse, pat on the back, I’ll suck yours if you suck mine affair.

The Look of Underwear runs for 19:13 and is a wank about the look of the film being a lot like a graphic novel but forgets to mention the ham-fisted ripping off of other film’s and calling them homages. Better to just not mention influences at all.

Creature Effects (of Underwear): 12:30 talk about the crappy costuming of the men in rubber werewolf suits and some prosthetic gore makeup. Nothing new here.

Stunts (of Underwear): Look how much like The Matrix we are (…just with a smaller budget, obviously). 11:43.

Sights and Sounds (of Underwear): This is pure disc filler with the behind the scenes cameraman splicing together 9:08 of non-moments from backstage and Kate Beckinsale giving the finger. Woo.

There's a music video of some losers called Finch who sing Worms of the Earth, a delightful song about one boy’s deep affection for his mother and the field of daffodils near his lakeside home.

Storyboard comparisons is a collection of the most actioniest scenes in a split screen with the storyboard for 6:42. Not bad and thankfully the art is bigger than the film bit.

Finally, two TV spots both running for :32 are separated into two links so it looks like there’s more stuff here than there is. These are called War and Trailer Cut Down.

Maybe there’s some good stuff in among those featurettes, but the rest is the usual sort of disc filler we’ve seen before.

In attempting to create a living breathing comic book, the director has forgotten there are limitations to that medium that cannot be re-produced in a film and vice versa. A steady trickle of some cheesier lines infuse the film and make it appear far too serious, which is silly given the premise of werewolves versus vampires.

Still, as an actioner, it’s alright, just don’t go expecting rocket science (regardless of the science the director claims he was trying to inject). As a debut film it’s pretty good so the director may be forgiven for some inexperience here, but generally this is just another vampire movie on an already swollen heap.