Underworld - Undeveloped

my rating: Nathan's rating:

Not a bad selection of new films to choose from this week. Michael Caine and Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions, with Haley Joel Osment in one last film before puberty consumes him. The likable Jason Biggs in Woody Allen's Anything Else. The indie film Thirteen, starring one of the little girls from TV's unjustly-cancelled Once & Again, as a not-quite-so-little-anymore girl. And Harvey Pekar appearing as himself (along with Paul Giamatti in the same role) in American Splendor, a criticallly-raved movie based on Pekar's comics about himself.

I couldn't talk Nathan into any of them. (Actually I didn't even try the last few, because I knew he'd never go for them. Way too grown-up for him.) He had his heart set on Underworld.

The trailers made it look like a rip-off of the Wachowski brothers' cinematic techniques, but with an occult storyline based on Romeo and Juliet, with the Montagues as werewolves and the Capulets as vampires. Well, at least it's borrowing from Shakespeare, I consoled myself as I gave in. It didn't. In fact, the story was deliberately opaque, and any characterisation must have been left on the cutting-room floor.

I suppose if I were 16, I might have gotten a kick out of all the shooting and gratuitous gore (lots of close-up shots of injections, bullet wounds, etc). And I might have found the "message" about the idiocy of mutual racism profound. Nathan really enjoyed it, and justified that by saying it good "for what it was".

In this shell of a story, the werewolves and vampires are in a centuries-old war with each other, for reasons that are poorly explained. On purpose. And something is in the works that will upset the balance of power in this war, but it's not clear what. Again, on purpose. In fact, several times, a character is about to provide some much-needed expository dialog, and someone interrupts him. The only way they can maintain any suspense is to not tell the audience what's happening.

Instead there are fight scenes, interlaced with scenes of the main characters posturing and spouting inane dialog. The fight scenes, of course, contain plenty of Matrix-esque acrobatic shootouts in ankle-length coats, that generally defy the laws of physics. The drama scenes, sadly, contain little or no characterisation, except to gradually make clear to me that I didn't give a damn what happened to any of them.

I guess I should have anticipated that a movie about vampires and werewolves might be lacking in "good guys", but I was hoping that some of the "bad guys" might at least be interesting in an anti-heroic sort of way. Hey, I'm "evil" enough to identify with the right kinds of villains. No such luck. Even the vampire heroine and her human (or is he?) boyfriend (not really, it seems) are difficult to care about... he, because we really see very little of him and much of that time he's just writhing in pain or struggling to escape, and she, because she shows no viewer-identifiable emotions except to shed a tear on cue over the centuries-old killing of her family. (It's tempting to say that Kate Beckinsale's character is killed by the stake of wooden acting.) By the time the movie was half over, I didn't give a damn what happened to anyone. Not a good sign. Not even the villains (i.e. the rest of the cast) were interesting.

So all I was left with were the secondhand innovative cinematic tricks and a whole lotta gothic-monster-type-movie clichés. Lots of bloody injuries. Transformation effects that I enjoyed 20 years ago when I saw an earlier version of them in An American Werewolf in London. Even the "no wait, he's not as dead as he looks" trick. (I would've expected that except that the characters are all un-dead, so it's kinda breaking the rules.) And the closing scene that tries to create an opening for a sequel. I can't say it was predictable, because I'd have to actually care what happens to bother predicting any of it.

Fortunately the volume of the soundtrack went up during the "action" scenes to help keep me awake. (In one instance, a character actually turns up a stereo to provide this effect.) The fact that the entire film - and I mean it: every single frame - is shot in semi-darkness made it tempting to take a nap. They could have saved some money by shooting this on black-and-white film stock, because the whole thing is lacking in any color except the occasional hint of red for the blood.

I'd like to give them some credit for a few clever updates on the werewolf and vampire mythos, like bullets containing silver nitrate to take out the werewolves and bullets impregnated with a UV-radiating substance (like sunlight) to kill vampires, but that sort of thing's been done before as well.

The cinema was pretty much full for the showing Nathan and I went to, the 7pm-ish Friday night one. Opening nights the past month or so have been pretty dead (which is typical of late-summer movies), but this week was different. Obviously there's a ready audience of adolescent boys who'll love this kinda shit. I'm not one of them. Tomorrow I'm going to see a matinee of The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen, at the second-run/classic movie house down the street, and put this evening's wasted time behind me. Then maybe pick up one of the interesting new movies at the cineplex on Sunday, by myself.