n the shadowy corners of an unnamed city, a centuries-old war is being waged between two immortal races: the high-living, well-groomed Vampires and the feral Lycans—otherwise known as werewolves.
The war is hidden from most of humanity, and it appears to be drawing to a close. Thanks to the relentlessness of the caste of warrior-vampire Death Dealers, the Lycan have been hunted nearly to extinction, and the Vampires are finally feeling safe in their huge, gloomy mansions.
But the Lycans, led by their top dog, Lucian (Michael Sheen), have a plan. They've armed themselves with high-tech, ultraviolet-radiation ammunition that burns the flesh off any vampire they hit. And they have their eye on a very special human—hospital intern Michael Corvin (Felicity's Scott Speedman)—who might hold the key to their resurgence.
Selene (Pearl Harbor's Kate Beckinsale) is one of the Vampires' premier Death Dealers—seeking revenge on a nightly basis for the murder of her family by werewolves some 500 years ago. She stumbles into the middle the first Lycan attempt to abduct Michael from a crowded subway platform. Against the orders of her own Vampiric leader, Kraven (Shane Broley), who harbors a not-so-secret infatuation with the pistol-packing vampires, Selene sets out to unravel the mystery of the Lycans' sudden interest in a lonely young doctor.
In a flurry of bullets, swordplay and high-flying martial arts worthy of The Matrix Reloaded, the endgame begins. Selene battles not just Lycan but her own kind as well, through the streets and subways and across the rooftops of the city, all the while protecting Michael from a complicated conspiracy stretching back literally centuries, to the birth of the two feuding species.
The Matrix goes goth
There's a lot to like about Underworld.
First-time feature director Len Wiseman has taken the narrow medieval streets of Budapest and turned them into a swirling, gothic backdrop for fast-paced, Matrix-style action and darkly effective creature effects. He and screenwriters Danny McBride and Kevin Grevioux (who plays a small role as a very large Lycan called Raze) have crafted a twisty plot that owes as much to Romeo and Juliet and I, Claudius as it does to Interview With the Vampire. And Kate Beckinsale, who's better known for romantic comedy roles in films like Serendipity than roles geared toward fast-paced combat, acquits herself just fine as the PVC-clad action heroine who must run and jump and scheme and fight through the 121-minute-long labyrinth of Underworld.
Navigating that labyrinth with Selene is an exciting ride, but it doesn't always make for an engaging tale. Wiseman has packed plot points, background and intrigue into the film as tightly as he's fit Beckinsale into her Carrie-Anne-Moss-collection body suit. As a result, there's just not enough room left over to develop the story's most important relationship: the budding romance between Selene and Speedman's doe-eyed and ultimately impenetrable intern, Michael.
This is not a fatal flaw. Give Wiseman credit for attaching a plot that does not insult the viewer's intelligence, and for adding another name to the too-short list of fully empowered female action heroes.
It's just too bad that Underworld couldn't deliver an emotional punch to equal the effect of all that frenetic gunplay, hyper-dense plotting and science-fictional cleverness. Had it, Wiseman and his crew might have produced something with which they might challenge the Matrix films, rather than simply emulate them.
