DarrenBarefoot.com

Avoiding more pressing matters since 2020

Posted on by

Review of the Matr…I mean Underworld

If you look up ‘Byzantine plot’ in the OED, you’ll no doubt find an inevitably-lengthy synopsis of Underworld. Usually, as you watch a film, the story becomes clearer. Usually there’s more exposition early in a movie, and by the end you’re left with lots of action and a clear head. That’s not the case here. In the latter third of the film, new characters are introduced, back story is expounded upon, and things just get more and more complex. So complex, in fact, that hardly anything gets resolved.

Underworld is the latest in a series of Matrix knock-offs, and is pretty unsucessful. In addition to the wacky plot, the acting is dreadfully spotty, the dialogue just dreadful and the action sequences, while occasionally nifty, are unremarkable and unnecessarily gory.

All of these flaws are very nearly off-set by the lovely Kate Beckinsale looking very fetching in black leather. Unfortunately, she’s kind of miscast (the director is her boyfriend, surprise, surprise). In a cage match of ass-kicking, black-leather-clad chicks, Carrie Anne-Moss would mop the floor with her.

One other, nitpicky thing. If you make a movie about vampires, you should respect at least a few of the vampire rules. Sure, this one honours the ‘stay out of sunlight’ rule, but that’s about it. In fact, the film seems interested in rendering the vampires as humans with sharp incisors. Check out the basic vampirica that they ignore:

  • They can see their reflections in windows and mirrors. One even checks her look in a full-length mirror before a party.
  • They breath.
  • They can enter homes uninvited.

Bogosity.

Bree has more to say about the movie. She likes Scott Speedman as the love interest, but she may have been fooled by his luscious hair and pecks. I thought, to borrow a quote originally describing Shannyn Sossamon, that he was a charisma-free zone.

This entry was posted in:Movies
Unknown's avatar

Published by dbarefoot

Darren Barefoot is an author, speaker and digital strategist. He’s the co-founder of Capulet Communications, and co-author of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”.

4 comments

  1. See, I like Shannyn Sossamon too. I thought it was a good thing that Speedman wasn’t anything special – he was just a normal guy who winds up being bitten by a werewolf and kidnapped by a vampire, thus being thrust in the middle of a battle that had been raging for centuries. Happens every day.

    The rules of basic vampirica that they broke are so basic that I’m pretty sure they did it on purpose. I have no idea why. Kind of reminds me of The Matrix that way. I did find it interesting though that you never saw a vampire actually feed in the movie.

    Maybe it’s because in the Byzantine plot, vampires really *are* just humans with fangs. In the movie, they’re not the undead, they’re human-bat hybrids. Though, logically if that were true, they wouldn’t burn in sunlight, it’d just hurt their eyes a bit. And they’d see in the dark by echolocation.

    Oh, and while Beckinsale is dating the director, they met on set, AFTER she was cast. So you can’t blame the casting on that. I thought Beckinsale did okay. She’s no Carrie-Anne Moss, but she did all right. I sure like her better than the Angels … One other point of trivia: Beckinsale’s ex plays the werewolf leader Lucian. He’s also the father of her child, and apparently it was very confusing for their daughter to see daddy trying to stab mommy through the roof of a car.

  2. psssst…The Matrix is actually a rip-off of the 1995 Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell. (Though the makers prefer the term “heavily influenced by”.)

  3. I’ve seen Ghost In the Shell, and I didn’t think it was that close. Similar ideas, but where there were similarities, they related to ideas that are *everywhere* in science fiction.

Comments are closed.