2006 / 106 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

This past weekend, Madison finally caught up with the rest of the nation. We finally got the latest from Woody Allen (“Match Point”) and Terrence Malick (“The New World”), two films that have been enjoying critical acclaim and awards speculation since opening in Los Angeles and New York in mid-December. According to most critics, these two offerings are among the best that modern film has to offer, towering and intelligent achievements. And yet, I wasn’t in the mood for either of those films. No. I was in the mood to see a woman dressed in skin-tight leather fight vampires and werewolves.

I wasn’t a big fan of the original “Underworld”, though I must admit that I didn’t hate it as much as my roommate did. For some reason, Ben has a vendetta against that movie. True, it’s not the hottest. It’s rather slow for an action film and it spends a lot of time on a plot that isn’t as ingenious and spectacular as its writers and director must have assumed it was. But it wasn’t terrible. It was simply mediocre. And yet…something about the trailers for its sequel intrigued me. It looked like the sort of brain-dead, action-packed fun that I have, frankly, missed. Maybe I’m tired of seeing movies that are actually good, who knows. I guess I’ve sat through too many well-written, well-directed films about people wrecking their own lives in the pursuit of some loftier goal (“Capote”, “Munich”, “Squid and the Whale”, et al) recently, because it was nice to just turn my brain off and let walls of noise, gore and action spill over me.

And yet, for a movie of this kind, “Underworld: Evolution” is still somewhat over-plotted. That was the main problem of the first film. It’s a movie about a secret war between vampires (known in these movies as “Death Dealers”, apparently because the word “vampire” sounds stupid) and werewolves (known as “Lycans” because someone probably thought that was clever) and yet, from the attention and time spent on the plot of the first film, you’d think director Len Wiseman thought he was adapting a Shakespeare play. There were betrayals and shocking revelations (which weren’t all that shocking, really) and all kinds of stuff that wasn’t as interesting as it should be. “Underworld: Evolution” provides more of the same. This time, however, we in the audience are given a better feel for this world. We are given a greater insight into the war between the Lycans and the, ahem, Death Dealers (it gets lamer every time I type it). We get a better understanding of the beef that exists between these two species. Unfortunately, after we get this understanding, the werewolves kind of fade into the background. This new film is more concerned with the politics of vampires. There’s a hierarchy to vampire society and “Underworld: Evolution” (since I’m sick of typing that we shall henceforth refer to the movie as “U:E”) has a lot of fun exploring it. It does so better than most films of its kind, though not as well as the original “Blade” which is the end-all, be-all of this kind of movie. I thought the original “Underworld” did quite well at establishing the atmosphere of this world and “U:E” shares that strength.

The reason I like this movie better, however, is simple: it kicks a lot more ass. None of us have come to a movie like this to see expert plotting and superb character development. If we get it, sure, we’ll take it. It’s an extra bonus. But first and foremost, a film like this exists to provide thrilling action sequences. For the most part, the original “Underworld” neglected this part of the equation. It wanted to be “The Matrix” with vampires and, well, it wasn’t. “U: E” doesn’t seem to possess such lofty aspirations. It seems to me that “U: E” just wants to be a better movie than the original. In this, it succeeds. The bad guy is better, for one thing. Though Bill Nighy is a cool actor and the perfect guy to play either a vampire king or a Keith Richards-esque rock fossil, he didn’t really get to go for the throat as he should have in the first “Underworld”. We get a few flashbacks of him here and he’s more menacing in those flashbacks than he was in the whole first movie. But the main bad-ass here is Marcus (played to the hilt by Tony Curran). Marcus is the original vampire, the one who started it all and spawned all the other bloodsucking freaks. Initially, Selene (Kate Beckinsale, with her ass thankfully turned toward the camera as often as possible) wants to resurrect Marcus from hibernation so she can explain why she slaughtered most of the head vampires in “Underworld” (or…something, her reasons are fairly murky). However, it soon becomes apparent that this was a boneheaded move. Marcus, you see, barely even bothers looking human. He just flies around impaling people with these wickedly cool wing things of his and generally looking like the worst nightmare of the guy who draws Meat Loaf’s album covers. He’s a pretty imposing bad guy and though we’re not sure what he hopes to accomplish by resurrecting his imprisoned brother (who, incidentally, was the world’s original werewolf) we’re instantly rooting against it. Anything this guy wants to do has just GOT to be bad news.

The plot is fairly murky and it’s made worse toward the beginning because “U:E” assumes you have the ability to remember specific moments in “U” and understand their meaning. Having seen “U” two years ago, once, in a slightly drowsy state, I was rather lost by much of this. It all clicked for me by the forty-five minute mark, however, and from then on I had a blast. This movie doesn’t neglect its plot, but it moves more quickly and it has a lot more action in it. There’s a cool chase between Marcus in full demon mode and large, commercial truck. There’s a pretty bad-ass scene where Marcus is so hungry for blood that he drains a stable full of horses (I guess humans just didn’t have enough nourishment, horses must be the Old Country Buffet of the vampire set). There are some cool gunfights. There are many daring escapes and altercations with various enemies, both Lycan and D.D. And, just when I was about to bemoan the lack of werewolves in the film (for some reason, I enjoy werewolf movies) the ending really amps up the number of lycanthropes and provides an even higher level of menacing, bad-ass, glorified B-movie entertainment.

The actors are basically irrelevant in this film, but some of them are worth mentioning. Tony Curran, as I already mentioned, is nicely intimidating. Bill Nighy rocks in his limited screen time. Kate Beckinsale does about as well as she can with what she has to work with (and she displays a lot more flesh this time which is worth the price of matinee admission in and of itself). And Derek Jacobi brings some welcome class to the enterprise in a rather regal role. Scott Speedman isn’t all that great (I’ve never seen him in anything where I thought he was too spectacular) but he isn’t distracting, so it could’ve been worse. Still, I think the movie might have had more of an emotional resonance if a better actor had occupied Speedman’s role. (This may have been the major stumbling block of the first film, come to think of it.) As is, it feels like Beckinsale has risked a little too much for a guy whose best attribute is that he’s handsome in a generic sort of way.

All in all, it’s not a great fantasy adventure (like “Sith” or “Serenity”) but it’s never boring, it’s got some fun action sequences, and it’s got more plot than most action movies. It’s not as good as “The Matrix” but it’s better and a lot more coherent than the hollow Matrix sequels. It ain’t Shakespeare but, unlike “U”, “U:E” doesn’t pretend to be.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.