Underworld is an incredibly mixed bag of a movie. The premise is red hot and holds so much promise that it is somewhat disappointing to see such a derivative and startlingly unoriginal movie produced. What you essentially are looking at is Romeo and Juliet with Vampires and Werewolves (Lycans) taking the place of the warring families. It’s a high concept idea to be sure, but the film fails to live up to this promise.

The main stumbling block on the films failure to deliver this idea is the underdevelopment of the central romance. Selene and Michael just don’t ‘click’ as couple and we are given no reason by the writers to buy into the relationship. They run about a bit, they fight a bit and then for no good reason they kiss. It’s completely out of the blue, there are no signs before this that the two might be in love and there is little development of the romance after this moment to make the viewer care about the couple.

It’s not the actors fault as both Beckinsale and Speedman are perfectly respectable in their roles. The blame must lie squarely at the feet of the writers. Their high concept Romeo and Juliet idea, which was the pitch for the movie has become a mere afterthought to the action and funky cinematography.

This is probably the films big plus point. The film looks amazing in all departments. Cinematography, art direction, costume, make-up all combine to make one hell of an attractive looking film. None more attractive than Kate Beckinsale in a tight latex suit. She is one hot tamale and it looks like she was poured into that outfit. She isn’t just window dressing though as she acquits herself well in the action scenes, actually convincing that a small waif like her could pull of these super human moves.

It has to be said though that even although the film does look very good, the visual style seems to have been pilfered from any number of films. The Crow, Batman, The Matrix, Blade 1&2, Dark City, these are just some of the movies that Underworld owes more than a passing nod too. Not necessarily a bad thing to borrow from other films, but the washed out gothic thing has been done a lot recently and Underworld doesn’t really offer anything new to the field.

The acting in the film varies considerably from downright dreadful to actually pretty respectable. In the downright dreadful zone we have Shane Brolly who plays sinister vampire Kraven. He is just terrible, sneering and snivelling to an almost laughable degree. His delivery is way off and he should seriously consider a few acting lessons.

In the pretty respectable area are Beckinsale and Speedman and also Michael Sheen as Lucian, the Lycan leader. I actually enjoyed him a good bit. Sure he’s your standard Euro trash villain, but he showed some nice added dimensions and facets as the plot moved on. Top of the heap though is Bill Nighy as Viktor, the Vampire Elder. He shows great power and weakness at the same time as he steadily regains his powers (some great make-up work there as well).

Although the Romeo and Juliet angle was botched the rest of the plot was actually pretty interesting. I bought into the whole crossing of the species thing and found the lore of the film fairly intriguing. There are also a few nice twists to keep you on your toes. There are a couple of plot holes that raise some questions, but there are always going to be things like that in films of this nature.

One problem that I did have is that they have messed with the existing lore of Vampires and Werewolves quite a bit. The vampires in this film seem to be able to drown for some reason. I was always under the impression that whilst there are a few ways to kill a vampire drowning them was not on the list. The werewolves are also a bit different in that they don’t have much hair; they are more like dogs really.

The effects in the film again, vary wildly. Some of the transformation effects for the Lycans are really good, but some of them are pretty dodgy. There are a couple of nice CGI shots that show the changes going on inside the body; I thought they were pretty cool.

Director Len Wiseman does a decent job with the direction, the action scenes are handled pretty well, but there are a lot of fast cuts that sometimes make them hard to follow. None more so than during the opening set piece in an underground train station. It’s a long gun fight between characters that have not yet been introduced and aside from Beckinsale and a big black guy look pretty much alike. Add the fact there is little or no dialogue and you have a scene that may look good, but is ultimately confusing to the viewer. The final battle is handled very well though, nicely showing the ferocity of it’s combatants through some good wire work and use of special effects.

As if to combat the lack of introductions before the first action sequence, for the next ten minutes or so the characters kindly say everybody’s name when they are speaking to each other. This really is writing by numbers and shows the weakness of the script.

The music in the film is pretty poor also. It’s a kind of orchestral/industrial hybrid that rattles on (very loudly) pretty much non-stop throughout the film. Don Davis shows in The Matrix how this style can work, but it irritates enormously here. I was actually thankful when a character turned on a car radio and we got a song to break up the tedium of the score.