UNDERWORLD

Rating: 1

A film, it should be noted, is more than just its art direction, a lesson that the makers of UNDERWORLD, alas, did not heed. While there was obviously much care taken with the color scheme, film exposures, and a consistant visual blast of post-industrial decaying decadence in both sets and costumes, little attention was paid to an overplotted and underwritten script. What transpires in its 121 minutes of running time is a monochromatic excursion into boredom and despair.
Everything in this film is a variation on gray, from leading lady Kate Beckinsale’s skin and corseted latex catsuit to the blood, of which, this being a tale of vampires and werewolves, there is plenty. There is also a great deal of action between spates of dialogue, which is spoken in a monotone that complements the color scheme. The action, too, displays variations of grey, as in dull, as in low-rent MATRIX-like moves without the dazzle, the wonder, or the savoir faire. Even the transformations from human to werewolf are a pale echo of the ones shown in, say, WOLFEN or AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.
As I said, there are vampires and werewolves, or, as they are called here, lycans, pronounced like the symbiotic life form composed of algae and moss usually found on trees and rocks. There is only one human of note in the film and that would be Michael (Scott Speedman), whom the lycans are trailing for their own mysterious reasons, and to whom Selene (Beckinsale) the death dealer vampire is oddly drawn. There is never any real reason given in the script for her to be attached to Michael except as a necessary plot point. Of course, Michael having been recently bitten by a lycan, turning him into one, is going to be a problem. The death Selene deals is to all lycans because of a war that has raged between vampires and lycans for, oh, just scads of time. So long, in fact, that no one can remember why it started in the first place.
There is a great deal of murky doings involving risen masters, unrequited love, double-dealing vampires, and an escalating arms race between the two sides. If only it all weren’t so very much like watching paint dry. The problem with immortality here is that it renders those with the dark gift terminally vapid, as in given to striking self-conscious poses while decked out in baroque outfits that are an uneasy blend of bondage and frippery. In the case of Selene, it is an eternity of knitting her brow and looking vaguely annoyed at the world. Perhaps her corset is a little too tight, or all that latex is chafing. One longs for the inspired eccentricity of Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola’s DRACULA, or even George Hamilton in LOVE AT FIRST BITE. Instead, Selene strikes a one-note sulk as she goes about killing lycans, saving Michael, killing more lycans, saving Michael again, and incurring the wrath of the head vampire (Bill Nighy in various skeletal guises) all in an unnamed crumbling city of vaguely European cast where it is never daytime, but where it is always about to rain, raining, or just finished raining.
As cheesy entertainment, UNDERWORLD is lugubrious. As a metaphor, it is ponderous. As a film, it’s a waste of celluloid.