Overview:
It’s an old concept. Take two or more big movie monsters and set them off against each other. Abbott and Costello did it. Fright Night did it. The Monster Squad did it. This movie has Werewolves and Vampires, which was also done in The Howling V. It’s been done a dozen times, but was it done well here?

Review:
Well, yes and no.

I’m a big fan of Vampires. I don’t know how many Vampire films I’ve seen, but it’s high double figures. Modern films have turned away from the old Bram Stoker style, old men in creepy castles seducing young virginal girls to suck their blood before another old man stakes them, and moved it in to the modern world. Pretty much every Vampire movie now has them as sexy young Gen Xers in nightclubs and fashionable clothes. The old men still run the show, but the young ones won’t take their crap.

To my knowledge Werewolves aren’t explored quite as much on film. For one thing the make up (or in this case CGI, which I’ll come back to) is harder to do. You just stick a pair of fangs in someone's face for a Vamp, but you need full body for the wolves. The myth hasn’t been messed with as much either. In Ginger Snaps it’s a teenage girl, Dog Soldiers has your average country family.

So how does Underworld handle the two monsters? Well, the Vampires are the modern type. They even live in a castle (more or less). They sit around in beautiful clothes, sipping blood from crystal wineglasses and acting like the elite of society. The Death Dealers (main Vampire characters in the film) wear leather and have very high tech computer equipment to help with their jobs (killing Werewolves). The wolves are basically squatters. They live in wrecked out buildings and the sewers, for the most part trying to stay hidden. They do have some high tech stuff (their bullets are UV numbers that look pretty futuristic) but the lab one of their scientist uses could well be a crack producing facility on CSI.

So the Vampire’s obviously have the advantage. The two races are at war and have been for an undefined amount of time. Werewolves have been hunted almost to extinction. The movie opens much like the trailers, with a voiceover by Kate as perches on a ledge high above the city. Another Vamp is assisting her in surveillance and they spot a couple of Werewolves. They follow them in to the subway, are spotted and a gunfight ensues. A human gets caught in the crossfire and the Romeo (Scott Speedman) to Kate’s Juliet (in the words of the films makers, I’m a little iffy on how much this follows the Shakespeare play) rushes to save her. He’s a surgeon after all. There’s a little look between him and Kate, hinting at more to come (who didn’t see that coming) before she chases after the Lycans (the film, and other materials, name for Werewolves. It’s comes from the official term, lycanthrope, dontcha know).

After the fighting is done the two races return to their relevant camps to lick wounds and regroup. It’s revealed that the Lycans want this human for some reason, and they have tried various others with the same surname. Why isn’t know, but there is some kind of test the others have failed. When Kate gets back to Vampland she checks the card from a digital camera and searches for a picture of Scott. She thinks the Lycans were following him and she wants to know why. And the race begins....

Acting:
This is a horror film so I didn’t really expect that high a calibre. Kate Beckinsale is very understated, but this is fitting for the cool and detached Selene who lost her family before being turned. While I think she could have stood to warm up (no pun intended) a little more, she does show enough girlyness when the character is alone to know there is an attraction to Scott. And she looks mighty fine in that PVC.

Scott Speedman basically plays an everyman shoved into a very messed up situation, and he plays it well. When he first showed up on screen I thought it was Sketch from Dark Angel, though a lot quieter. I didn’t realise until now that the girl thrust in to a strange world in Blade was also a medical professional, and I’m not sure why that choice was made here. Short of the girl in the subway and some more first aid type stuff to Kate later he could have been a plumber and it wouldn’t have made a difference. He does fine here, and shows some action ability later on, but I think his future will exist in lighter movies (depending how the inevitable Underworld 2 plays out of course. I could be proved wrong).

Michael Sheen (no relation to the other Sheen’s) plays Lucian, the head of the Lycans. He does a stunning job although he looked a heck of a lot like a Vampire who was slumming it (more on that later). I got a real sense of age from him and he out acted the misses (Kate Beckinsale is his girlfriend). If he lands a couple more meaty roles this Welshman could go pretty far.

Shane Brolly plays his Vampire equivalent and gave the least impressive performance of the film. He’s Irish, and the character sounds like that some of the time, but the rest of the time he’s eastern European. It could just be the flu I’ve just gotten over but he seemed all over the place.

Shane’s character is only acting leader of the Vamps, as the elders spend a bunch of time hibernating for reasons that aren’t fully covered. The one that gets woken up (a ceremony is meant to take place in a couple of days but Kate breaks the rules and wakes him before his turn) is Viktor, played by Bill Nighy. He spends much of his time as a dried up corpse slowly coming back to life, and he doesn’t look much different when he’s all better. If you’ve seen Still Crazy imagine his character (the lead singer) without the drug history and your there. He played the power very well and it was obvious that he was a man to be feared.

The supporting cast were all pretty competent. Sophia Myles (4 days younger than me, give me a shout next time your in the Highlands love) doesn’t have much to do as Selene’s rival but she does it well. Erwin Leder plays the slightly crazy old Lycan scientist as, well, only slightly crazy. The Vamp weapon guy is very good, though I’m not sure who was playing him. If you make films and you do know, hire him more please. And finally Kevin Grevioux plays the only Werewolf I found truly wolfish.

Non-acting
And there lies my main problem with the movie. The Werewolves are basically just Vampires that left their exfoliating cream and conditioner at home. If it wasn’t for the couple of main characters generally being on one side or another when trouble starts I wouldn’t have know who was shooting silver and who had sunlight in their clips. The two groups looked WAY too similar. Personally, I would have cast more muscular people as the wolves. There’s no massive justification except to make a distinction with the Vampires. Or at least dress them in brown or something. Not everyone has to wear black... They could also have had warmer looking skin. Vampires are pale, but Lycans don’t have to be.

The troubles could partly have been caused because the film has a washed out look. This is deliberate and I thought it worked pretty well. Everything is pretty dark and moonlight does give that kind of look to everything. Towards the end the lighting was actually a little brighter than I would have gone for. They are underground but at times the spilling moonlight could easily have been spilling sunlight (not to good for the Vampires). I’ve heard people say it was a bit dark but I never found it to be a problem.
The action is almost all people shooting at each other.

That’s fine, no problem with that. What would be nice is if they had to reload a little more often. If there’s one thing I hate in action films its magic clips. Guns that normally hold a couple of dozen bullets fire for ages and never run out. Having to reload doesn’t slow the action down, it gives needed breaks. The Matrix didn’t have a problem with clips running out so why should anyone else. It’s a pretty miner quibble, but one of my pet hates.

This was Len Wiseman’s first directing effort and it worked out okay. The film looks very stylish but doesn’t make the mistake of trying to use too many tricks and fancy shots. There are little bits of wirework but nothing too over the top. Matrix comparisons are obvious, it’s a film about people in leather shooting guns, but it’s not entirely fair. Nothing seemed directly lifted and they stayed completely away from bullet time (though there is a little slow motion in there). The action scenes were pretty tightly edited and it was sometimes slight confusing, but that’s a problem that many action films suffer from now.

The Werewolf transformations were well done, with plenty of bone popping and pretty seamless morphing. At one point some transformation is shown from the inside which was a nice touch. The inevitable Vampire ‘dusting’ (more melting really) was also handled well, kind of like the Reaper deaths in Blade 2.

The music was rather Matrix-esq., and I recognised one rock riff though I can‘t place it. One dread that I heard elsewhere, and shared even though I like the band, was that an Evanesance track would pop up somewhere. I didn’t hear one.

Conclusion:
Not the best, but not the worst Vampire film I have seen. It’s a decent action film to tide the gaps between Blade movies and Jon Merz novels (www.zrem.com Lawson is a TRUE vampire enforcer, they way it should be done. The Destructor also adds Lycanthropes to the mix). If Bubba Ho Tep is playing near you, go see that first. Same for Lost in Translation and possibly Anything Else (I haven’t seen any of these films, but the first two have great buzz and the third has Christina Ricci). Failing that, go see this, or wait till next weekend, as the horizon looks pretty poor.

MacGyver Rating: 3 out of 5 Planets


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