FilmBlather.com

"This coven has grown weak. Decadent."

The most obvious thing to glean from Underworld is that Kate Beckinsale has superpowered kneecaps. In fact, that's about the only consistent aspect of this stylish, watchable mess -- Beckinsale's vampiric hero possesses the talent of jumping off large buildings and landing gracefully on the ground without hurting herself. In fact, she does that exponentially more than she does what vampires are supposed to do: y'know, bite people. But with cinematography this gorgeously monochromatic, and, eventually, an allegory so entertainingly ludicrous, all can be forgiven.

Make a movie about vampires or werewolves, and I'm there. Make one about vampires and werewolves, and I'm banging down the door. The title seems particularly promising -- it's one thing to just film something about the legendary creatures of the night, and quite another to create a beguiling world for them to inhabit. Putting them in ours can make for a decent horror flick, but it's just not as interesting.

Underworld kinda sorta lives up to its name. It tries to define a world, and it certainly creates a distinctive, moody look, but the requisite attention to detail is lacking. There is a sufficiently gothic atmosphere, and an appropriate sense of terminal gloom and doom, but nothing genuinely memorable. The great movie worlds are the ones you'd like to visit, or at least the ones you feel you could visit if you wanted to. This place doesn't really exist.

But it sure does look good, doesn't it. The celluloid seems to drain of color as the film proceeds, becoming almost indistinguishable from black and white in the third act. There are images here of startling power, though director Len Wiseman is intent on chopping the movie into tiny pieces when a more deliberate editing style was clearly called for to compliment the somber mood. Certain shots would have doubled in their impact had they been held a few seconds longer.

The plot concerns an ancient war between vampires and werewolves, and a vengeful "Death-Dealer" vampire named Celene (Kate Beckinsale) who discovers a disturbing truth when she meets a human (Scott Speedman) being chased by the werewolves for reasons unknown. The acting head of her coven (I am enamored with that word and am currently trying to use it as much as possible in everyday conversation) thinks her concerns trifling, doesn't believe that the werewolves are planning an uprising, and may even be in league with a werewolf leader he claims to have killed hundreds of years ago.

I liked the way Underworld deals with the fact that vampires are immortal; it is one of the only aspects of its mythology that the movie outlines in painstaking detail. There is an entire system set up, with three "elder" vampires awakened one at a time to reign while the others slumber. In all the commotion, Celene decides to break the rules and awaken her longtime mentor Victor (Bill Nighy) out of turn. This is mildly upsetting to those who have followed the same routine for thousands of years.

A problem: Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman are the only two recognizable stars in Underworld, and they are both entirely useless. Despite being the primary plot catalyst, Speedman barely even gets screentime, spending most of the movie locked up in some sort of interrogation chamber. Beckinsale has nothing to do -- she shoots guns a couple of times, and has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it martial arts scene during the climax. Mostly, the fate of the world is left to the supporting players, which doesn't bode well for our sympathies.

There's a revelation two-thirds of the way through that suddenly turns Underworld into a simplistic but ballsy allegory for the history of race in America. I'm usually careful about claiming that a movie is intended as allegory, and it is so blatant here that there is absolutely no doubt about the screenwriter's aims. I won't go into the details because that would involve revealing the twist, but I didn't know whether to be amused or insulted. As I so often do, I chose to be amused.