Underworld (DVD: February 2003)

This is a film that misses every opportunity to excell itself. The bad guy's on top of the car, pounding a dagger through the roof, do we (a) pull out the fancy gun and shoot him full of holes (done to death but still rewarding to watch), (b) slam on the brakes, throw him off & then accelerate to make mincemeat of him or (c) do nothing, stare at each other and wait to get stabbed. Our magnificent superhero chooses (c). And this sort of dithering is indicative throughout. Not the sort of thing you'd expect from a (supposedly) rock-hard, blood-lusting, indestructable super-killer - as we are supposed to believe Kate Beckinsale's character is. Jessica Fletcher with fangs would be a more accurate description. Which is a shame, as Underworld taps into all the right elements: the gothic genre-bending backstory, the noirish cool, the comicbook heroics of Blade, the ultra-violence of John Woo (*see Chinese films only, not the tat he's made in HW), it just doesn't actually succeed in doing anything other than namechecking and then rainchecking.

Is it the budget? Is it the script? Is it the complete lack of any charisma of any of the performers (please note: dressing up your lead actress in black leather does not guarantee watchability)? Frankly, who cares? There's no mistaking the sets look fantastic, a saturnine mix of The Matrix, The Crow & Dr Caligari but that's about it. The majority of the budget seems to have gone into illuminating the background at the expense of everything happening in the foreground. The action scenes are diluted, the script patchy at best & the performances devoid of direction. The whole thing looks like a dress rehearsal for the main event!

Underworld desperately wants to be a contemporary of X-Men, The Matrix & Blade, but in reality it barely measures up to the equally disappointing Daredevil.

RATING: 1/2

(c)Limer 2004