Underwhelming.

Underworld

2003

D: Len Wiseman

**********

Pros: Visual style, Potentially Interesting Premise, Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, Practical effects, Some unintentional humor

Cons: Unlikable characters, Forgettable action, Lycans’ design, Bad CGI

     I’m not much of a fan of Len Wiseman.  Despite his knack for production design, his movies, the surprisingly fun Live Free or Die Hard notwithstanding, tend to be bland and underwhelming.  His directorial debut is no exception.  This is a movie about werewolves and vampires getting into gunfights with each other, and they still managed to make it boring.  I don’t quite understand how this movie made enough money to warrant three sequels and get Wiseman enough clout to amend Die Hard and suck the fun out of Total Recall.  

     In a vicious war between the vampires and the Lycans, (what the movie calls werewolves), the latter have been on the defensive since their leader Lucian (Michael Sheen) was supposedly slain by Kraven (Shane Brolly).  The only evidence he had of this accomplishment was a small patch of skin bearing Lucien’s brand.  Despite the utter lack of conclusive evidence, the vampires have assumed that their enemy is dead, because pathological gullibility is apparently a side effect of vampirism.  Seriously, no one questions this over the course of 600 years, and it doesn’t help that Kraven has pussy written all over him.  The only one who can see this is Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a beautiful vampires who is doggedly loyal to the vampire elder Viktor (Bill Nighy)  Sure enough, Lucian is alive and well, combing the human population for the heir to the line of Corvinus, a person could hold the key to linking the two species.  Selene stumbles upon this fact during a competent but forgettable subway shootout with Raze (Kevin Grevioux).  Afterwards, she ignores invitations to a party in order to follow clues which lead her to Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman).  That’s all well and good.  If she went down to that party she might have bantered, joked or revealed something about her personality that would have made her come off as a well-developed and likable character, and we obviously don’t want that in this movie.  She finds Michael, but not before Lucian bites him.  Despite keeping him alive for pragmatic reasons, they begin to fall for each other while going on an adventure which overturns Selene’s preconceptions.          

     The movie wastes no time introducing us to Selene, who opens the movie with the following exposition: 

     “The weapons had evolved, but our orders remained the same: Hunt them down and kill them off, one     

     by one.   A most successful campaign.  Perhaps too successful.  For those like me, a Death Dealer, this

     signaled the end of an era.  Like the weapons of the previous century, we, too, would become

     obsolete.  Pity, because I lived for it.” 

So not only is our heroine trying to commit werewolf genocide, she seems to enjoy it.  Not even a full minute in, and I already dislike the protagonist.  In fact, her dislike of Kraven at the beginning of the movie isn’t based on healthy skepticism, but rather because he’s not aggressive enough in the campaign to kill off the werewolves (well, also because he has a creepy crush on her, but still).  Her motivation stems from when her family was murdered.  She explains to Michael that it was the werewolves who did it, and Viktor protected her while turning her into a vampire.  It’s later revealed that it was Viktor who murdered Selene’s family, not the werewolves.  Seriously, Selene.  Declaring war on an entire race of people out of revenge is bad enough, but you had no evidence they even did it outside Viktor’s word?  I can understand a little mistaken identity when you’re in the throes of immediate grief, but you’ve had 600 years to think this over.  You know how, in spite of all the nonsense in Ultraviolet, I still found its heroine likable because, despite having certainly suffered at the hands of humans and having pretenses of hating them all, she decided defy everyone else  to protect a helpless human child?  Selene is the exact opposite.  Don’t get me wrong, I love redemptive characters, but Selene shows little to no remorse upon finding out that that she murdered untold number of people under false pretenses.  She only seems upset that she was lied to.  This might have been addressed in the sequel, but when a character calls her out, she simply brushes him off.  But she’s hot and she wears a cool suit, so that’s gotta count for something.        

     The vampires in general are pretty contemptible.  I know that the twist states that they are pretty much the bad guys in the war, but it’s hard for that twist to have much impact when it’s already apparent that they’re total bastards.  This is evident in their use of silver nitrate rounds.  When they discover that the werewolves have developed ammunition with ultraviolet-irradiated liquid (which gives off a pretty blue glow that is somehow not visible through the gun barrel), they are initially baffled that “a mangy dog” can come up with an idea.  Because they apparently have a habit of underestimating other beings out of bigotry, they assume it was stolen from the military.  While the werewolves can be understood for developing this new ammunition since it was a much-needed equalizer in a war of survival in which they were losing, the vampires adapt this idea for a surefire way to cull more werewolves.  Unlike hollow-point bullets, which are legitimate defense/law enforcement tools because they are designed to stop an aggressor before he can cause more harm, and the UV rounds, these things don’t seem to have much stopping power.  They are meant to kill a werewolf with certainty regardless of how the battle turns out.  In other words, it’s a murder weapon.  The vampires’ armorer Kahn (Robbie Gee) gleefully points out that the liquid contaminates the bloodstream with “nothing to dig out.”  Even worse, at one point in the movie Selene describes the safe houses they use to interrogate the werewolves.  They remove the silver bullets from their bodies, torture them until they get their information and then kill them swiftly and mercifully “put the bullets back in,” letting them die in agony.  That’s considerate. 

     The werewolves may be fighting the good fight, but aren’t that good, either.  Lucian became the vampires’ enemy after Viktor murdered his lover, and he’s played with charisma by Michael Sheen.  However, he and the other Lycans lose sympathy through their method of finding the heir to the Corvinus bloodline.  They kidnap anyone who happens to have a similar last name and chain him/her from the ceiling with an uncertain fate if they fail a blood test.  

And it can't possibly be this guy, he's not nearly pretty enough!

Lucian also bites Michael without his consent, which is a pretty sucky thing to do. 

     Another thing that bothers me about the werewolves is their design.  I hate it.  I know this may seem like a subjective nitpick, but it really bugs me.  The werewolves don’t look anything like werewolves.  Len Wiseman and his associate Patrick Tatopoulos wanted to use this design that was meant to look feline, ignoring that this is a legendary creature that people logically expect to resemble a combination of humans and wolves.  Not  cats.  Not pitbulls.  Not your freakin’ keeshond, WOLVES.  Personally, I prefer lycanthropes with humanoid bodies and lupine heads (the Wolf Man look I’ll abide since it is recognizable from a classic).  I don’t just like the long muzzle because I’m a furry it looks good.  There’s a practical reason for it.  Since a werewolf infects or kills a person by biting them, it would make sense that they have mouths that are optimized for such a task.  Since they don’t look remotely lupine and they don’t change based on the moon phases, there really is nothing that defines these creatures as werewolves.  I know that the franchise calls them “Lycans” and makes a distinction between them and true werewolves, but even that word is derived from the Greek term for “wolf,” so I’m not even going to call them that.  They look more like the Diamond Dogs from My Little Pony.  Now, if Underworld was a good movie, I don’t think this would have ruined it for me, but it still would have annoyed me.  I do feel sorry for the highly skilled special effects artists who worked so hard building those ugly costumes, as they are very detailed and convincing.    

       Selene’s love interest, Michael doesn’t seem to have any defining personality.  He…trains at a hospital and he’s pretty.  That’s about it.  At first, this isn’t exactly a flaw.  Undeveloped characters onto which the viewer can project himself/herself can be effective.  For the first part of the movie, he is basically a normal person put into an abnormal situation.  This movie, however, makes the same mistake made by Stephanie Meyer when she conceived Bella Swan.  The character type stops working when that character does something incredibly stupid, like falling in love with a crazy vampire for no reason.  There is really is no chemistry between the two characters.  If not for one starry-eyed stare into each others’ eyes at the end of the film, I don’t think there’s anything that could even be mistaken for romance in Underworld.  Eventually, Michael turns into a half-vampire, half-werewolf hybrid.  This design is also disappointing.

      The main villain of the movie, Viktor, is pretty evil.  Selene trusts him and sees him as a father figure until she finds out that it was he who killed her family.  Despite promoting rules against hunting humans, he does it himself, adding a little villainous hypocrisy.  He also murdered his own daughter for being in love with Lucian, by burning her and her unborn child at the stake.  This does beg the question: if Diamond Dogs and vampires can breed, how come it hasn’t happened at least once in six centuries.  In addition to this vileness, he has a bit of humanity, seeing as how he spared Selene because she looked so much like this daughter.  He’s a somewhat effective villain.  Also, Bill Nighy is a grand duke of Ham & Cheese performances, and his overacting in Underworld is quite amusing.  I already mentioned how Kraven (as if his name isn’t enough of a giveaway) is a transparent coward.  I know he’s supposed to be, but he should be subtle enough about it to pass himself off as a hero to the audience since he does so to the other vampires.  He may be power-hungry, but he mostly collaborates with the people who end up being the good guys.  He also seems to be a moderating force in the Diamond Dog hunt.  The only really bad thing he does is at the end.  Lucian makes light of his cowardice, and Kraven is so butthurt that he shoots him in the back while pouting cartoonishly.  To illustrate my point about the silver nitrate rounds, Lucian takes a while to go down.  There’s also a vaguely Machiavellian female vampire who helps Selene for some self-serving reason, but she’s dropped like a hot potato and doesn’t even appear in the sequels.

     Underworld’s premise has promise, but it ultimately fails due to the lack of any interesting, let alone sympathetic, characters to root for.  While many dark stories lack moral characters, those works tend to get around that by making their amoral cast witty, superficially charming or otherwise memorable.  Most of Underworld’s characters are flat, even if Lucian has his moments. 

     The visual style of this movie is attractive.  I like the blue/black look, and the cinematography is great.  The score is forgettable and occasionally noisy.  Although the practical effects are very well-done, the CGI is poorly integrated.  One particularly bad moment is when some Diamond Dogs are doggy-paddling against some walls while CG debris is kicked up.  The action scenes are also pretty drab.  For all this movie’s flaws, it would have been a guilty pleasure if it just had better action.  If the gunfights had gone Michael Mann-style gritty and realistic, with concessions given toward the vampires’ and Diamond Dogs’ strengths, it would have worked.  Conversely, if they had gone all the way with inventive, over-the-top stylization, like in Shoot’em Up or Equilibrium, it would’ve worked too.  The closest thing to that happening is when Selene spins around shooting a clean circle in the floor around her with a pair of nice Berettas (even though there can't be more than 30 rounds between the two guns) and falls through it like a Looney Tunes character.  Just so you know, Mythbusters has suggested that that may be a bit unrealistic.  Instead, the action is a bland medium.  When stylization does happen it comes in the form of trite clichés, like poorly-executed slow-motion and body parts that wait three seconds before falling off after getting cut with a katana.  There is one effective use of violence when Viktor slaps a Diamond Dog so hard it leaves a gaping, bloody gash on his face.  If you want to watch a fun action movie with a dark, gothic atmosphere, watch The Crow instead. 

     Underworld does have some moments of humor.  There are very rare moments of intentional humor, most of them coming from Michael Sheen.  Other scenes you can’t be sure, due to the overall humorlessness of the movie.  Like one part where Selene is driving Michael to safety after having sustained a wound.  Not one second after she says she’s fine, she faints and totals her nice Jaguar.  One part that comes off really campy is Viktor’s death.  It seems vampire decapitation works on logic strikingly similar to that of when a cartoon character walks off a cliff.

One of the sillier scenes is when Selene is at the firing range inside the vampires’ headquarters.  The bullet shield seems to be perfectly flat and upright, which is great if you want the bullets to come right back at you.  Also, the vampires are so decadent that they use marble busts as target practice.  My favorite part, however, is that two vampires are sparring in front of the firing line right next to the shooting range. 

Between this and watching Bill Nighy’s acting like he has hemorrhoids, there are few things to amuse in this movie.  I personally think all it needed was Selene getting into a well-choreographed fight with a sexy female werewolf. 

That and better character development, better dialogue and better action, then the movie would have been pretty good.    

                  

QUOTES

LUCIAN: You’re acting like a pack of rabid dogs.  And that, gentlemen, will simply not do.  Not if you expect to defeat the vampires on their own ground.  Not if you expect to survive a war.

SELENE: Besides, I’ll be all right [faints from blood loss]

VIKTOR: Your incompetence is becoming most…taxing.

VIKTOR: What’s…this…RUCKUS?!

SELENE: Tell me, Kraven, did you have the nerve to cut Lucian’s skin, or did he have to do it himself?

KRAVEN: Is there another way out?

LUCIAN: [beat] I guess it never occurred to you that you might actually have to bleed to pull of this little coup!