My Favourite Movies: Underworld

I was just dying to see this (no pun intended) from the moment I saw Kate Beckinsale drop 6 stories bounce once to absorb her momentum and then casually keep on walking without any effort at all. That, I said to myself, is how immortal supernatural creatures should be - graceful, unafraid and drop-dead gorgeous. My only fear was that the rest of the movie wouldn’t live up to the preview. Mostly, except for a few wobbles, it actually exceeded my expectations.

The plot is a fairly simple one. It’s a love story as well as an echo of a love story between a vampire (Beckinsale) and a Werewolf (or actually descendent of the original immortal who is later ‘turned’) - played by Scott Speedman - which shadows an earlier love story that started off a 600 year old war between the vampire overlords and the werewolf slave race. It is, in many ways, a long story. Anyway, in the present the war is almost over – or at least that’s how it seems until a traitor is discovered in the vampire coven followed by lots of dead bodies! But it’s not the plot that sold me on this film and it’s not even the lovely Kate. What I liked so much, I could almost say loved, is the whole look and feel of the movie. For one thing both vampires and werewolves use guns against each other – silver bullets on one side (as you might expect) and ‘liquid light’ bullets on the other (as you wouldn’t really expect). One thing that did kind of confuse me however, is why no one wears body armour. Maybe their apparent immortality makes them too arrogant to even consider dying?

The special effects I thought were generally very good – especially the werewolf change process. The many fight scenes were suitably fast, brutal and well choreographed. The acting was largely good except for the suitably named Craven played by Shane Brolly who was actually appalling. I honestly don’t know how he got the job. My favourite actor in this movie was Michael Sheen who played Lucien, the werewolf forced to watch his vampire lover and their unborn child burn to death under the rays of an unforgiving sun and under the orders of an unforgiving father. He was quite simply superb and acted everyone else off the screen by his very presence.

I was honestly less than impressed by both the sequel and the prequel – especially the prequel which I thought was both very boring and completely unnecessary. At least Underworld: Evolution had a few saving graces though none of them come to mind readily! Anyway, if like me you enjoy the whole vampire genre and are looking for something more than the usual garlic and neck biting this could be for you. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have on numerous occasions.