Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Michael Sheen, Bill Nighy, Rhona Mitra

2009

In fact, it just opened yesterday, and I think this makes the first time I've actually blogged a movie that was still showing. Usually I bring you fare that's been out for several years (but then, I think that's the charm of my blog as compared to all those other "timely" movie critics - I mean, it's EASY for them to state their impressions about a film, right when it's still fresh on everybody's mind - it's rather difficult to review a movie properly when it's five years old. Either nobody knows what I'm talking about or they already have their preconceived notions)

Whatever, I took the wife to see this one, because we loved the first movie, still liked the second one, and we'd had a tough week this week, lot of stress at work, and I says to her I says, "Listen honey, what you need to relax is some good old fashioned vampire/werewolf lashin'!"

Well, we got the vampires and the werewolves and the lashin', but to be honest it wasn't all that good. Seriously, this had the look and feel of Bloodrayne (which was rather cheap knockoff of old 80's Conan movies, only as a vampire) and the editing stunk. I'm telling you, there was no rhyme or reason to the cuts, it was completely incomprehensible. Visually it was simply stultifying. You couldn't understand the fight scenes - and fight scenes are the simplest scenes to understand: hacking with swords = creatures die. Fine. And yes, we have plenty of swords slicing through werewolves, chopping of limbs and torsoes, but in each fight scene you can't tell who's hacking what or whom or where or when. It's just a mess.

And personally, I didn't like the whole idea of the prequel. Any fan of the Underworld series already knows the origin: Viktor killed his own daughter because she fell in love with Lucian, the werewolf, and Viktor considered that an abomination to nature. Viktor down the line changes Kate Beckinsale into a vampire instead of having her as dinner because she reminded him of the daughter. Basically, the story has already been integrated into the other two movies, and we really don't need to see it played out. This is one of those "sometimes" in the phrase "Sometimes, less is more."

This was an unnecessary movie. Didn't need to be made.

That being said, I have to state that the bright spot is, of course, Nighy, who is simply one of the coolest badasses you'll ever see. I kid you not, if this franchise had caught on like the Star Wars franchise, then Viktor as a name would have equal footing with Darth Vadar in our common popular culture.

That, and Sheen played a good role, and Rhona Mitra

. . . well, she's simply steamin'!

With that, I better go, 'lest the wife read this post and sends me out of doors to sleep with the wolves!

VG