Underworld: extended cut

The Film

Note: This review is largely a copy-and-paste of my coverage of the Region 1 standard definition DVD release... which was largely a copy-and-paste of my coverage of the British cinema release. God, why does it feel like I've been here too many times?

Underworld is a curious beast: a movie made with a relatively low budget and supposedly a lot of conviction on the part of the cast and crew, yet it feels like a big budget, soulless Hollywood outing. What makes this so bizarre is that the end result seems to have been exactly what the director envisioned. It is yet another heavily stylized gothic action movie that takes a lot of inspiration from the Blade movies, with a pinch of The Matrix thrown in for good measure. It's heavily self-conscious style-over-substance, but provided you are willing to check your brain in at the door, you might just enjoy it.

An unseen war between Vampires and Lycans (werewolves) has waged for centuries. The former leader of the vampires, Viktor (Bill Nighy), is in a state of hibernation, and the vampires are now governed by the obnoxious Kraven (Shane Brolly). Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is a Death-Dealer, a vampire who specialises in the assassination of Lycans. One night she witnesses some Lycans attempting to abduct a mortal, Michael (Scott Speedman), and as she investigates further she uncovers treachery and answers to questions that have gone unanswered for centuries. Gradually, she becomes aware that the state of her world and how it became the way it is are not what she has been led to believe.


Got that? It doesn't really matter, because, script-wise, Underworld is quite weak. The concept of Vampires and Lycans and the racial tension resulting from their long-standing feud should have made for great source material, but the problem is that writer-director Len Wiseman and his two co-writers don't seem to be quite sure what to make of it. As a result of trying to make the film stylish and hip, no-one in the film is really allowed to express any true feelings. What passes for emotion is almost always expressed through supposedly thoughtful glances. A good deal of the characters are woefully under-developed, with the main personalities seeming to be little more the cardboard cut-outs, such as the deranged, outburst-prone villain, the gruff and stern elder and the vicious young upstart. Furthermore, a lot of plot elements are not properly investigated, the most apparent being Selene's affair with Michael. Considering how pivotal this relationship is to the plot, it is barely explored at all, making one wonder what is really at stake for Selene. Dialogue has a habit of coming across as quite pretentious, and quite often you can almost feel the writers patting each other on the back for coming up with such insightful material. The problem is that the material is rarely insightful, and more often than not comes across as clichéd.

The film, like the characters and the world they inhabit, seems incredibly po-faced but also quite naff at the same time, which makes for some unintentional comedy, particularly with regard to the performances. Kate Beckinsale, who is not the first person most people would think of when casting a gun-toting action heroine, copes reasonably well with her role and comes off looking good thanks to the fact that she is able to make her lightweight character seem a little deeper than it actually is. It's true that her character spends the entire film looking discontented, but she does it so well you can't help but like her. The rest of the actors in the film suffer, though, mostly due to underwritten roles or a tendency to overact in the worst possible way. Michael Sheen is quite effective as the unbalanced werewolf leader Lucian, but Shane Brolly and and Bill Nighy ham it up something rotten, and Scott Speedman is about as uncharismatic a lead as you could hope to meet, and has the look of a Californian surfer who has somehow wandered on to the set of a Gothic horror movie. It certainly doesn't help that his character's role in the movie is mainly reactionary. Sophia Myles, though, does a decent job as Selene's friend (or is that attendant?) Erika. Considering how underwritten her part is, she actually makes more of an impression than any of the men in the film.


Visually, though, the film is something else entirely. In on the various trailers that circulated prior to its release, Underworld looked like a rip-off of The Matrix crossed with Blade, but in reality, this is somewhat misleading because, although there are two or three shots that are literally carbon copies of similar compositions in The Matrix, that's about it. The cinematography, by Tony Pierce-Roberts, is excellent, with a moody atmosphere comprised mostly of deep blacks and blues. Virtually every shot in the movie can be paused and admired, and although the film has its fair share of slow-motion sequences, they never come across as being as gratuitous as those in the Matrix films. On the down-side, some of the CGI work is noticeably ropey, particularly the various shots that show the Lycans morphing between their human and werewolf forms. Still, credit where credit's due: the production team has managed to make the most of a relatively limited budget and create a product that actually looks like it had a much higher budget than it did. It's also nice to see that the vast majority of the creature effects (barring a few morphing shots) were done with animatronics rather than CG - something of a breath of fresh air these days. Production design is extremely strong, making heavy use of both constructed sets and existing locations in Budapest.

Ultimately, like The Matrix and its wretched sequels, Underworld is extremely self-conscious and not half as profound as its creators would like to think it is. However, all is not wasted, and the end result is mildly satisfying, although it is definitely a film that will annoy those in the mood for deep thinking or innovation. Underworld is certainly not a poor movie - in fact, it's considerably better than the sequel that largely the same team produced last year. It's just too bad that more couldn't have been done with the source material, because, barring the Blade trilogy, there have been few genuinely successful attempts to combine action with horror.

HD DVD Presentation

Underworld is one of several titles owned by a Blu-ray exclusive studio in the US (in this case Sony), but whose international rights are held by less partisan entities. In September, Underworld was released on both HD DVD and Blu-ray in Germany by Concorde Home Entertainment, and they have provided a beautiful package for the film. Presented in 1080p its original 2.39:1 aspect ratio, encoded in VC-1, the film looks brilliant from start to finish. While it does not have the level of fine detail that its Concorde stable-mate Silent Hill boasts, this seems to be reflective of the source materials rather than anything that has gone wrong at the encoding stage. In any event, the details are nothing to sniff at, and put most other HD releases I have seen to shame. The image balance is also spot on, with the high contrast photography coming across magnificently, while the grain is maintained in a completely naturalistic way, and there are no noticeable compression artefacts whatsoever. I have no idea how this version compares to the recent US Sony Picture Blu-ray release, but they would have their work cut out to better this.

The audio, too, is exemplary. As with Silent Hill, Concorde have elected to provide a lossless track for the German dub (DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1), while providing a lossy DTS-HD Hi-Resolution 5.1 track for the original English. The US release comes with an English PCM 5.1 track, but, as with the video, it would have to be exceptional indeed to better what is on offer here. Lossy or not, the English track is phenomenal, a true work-out for your audio system that improves in leaps and bounds on the already impressive Dolby Digital 5.1 track that was found on the standard definition release. The bass has to be heard to be believed, while the intense level of split-channel action, especially during the various fight scenes, is among the most immersive I can remember hearing recently.

The only subtitles included are German. By default, these become enabled when English audio is selected, but disabling them is simply a matter of entering the setup menu and unchecking the requisite box.

Extras

As with all of Concorde's initial slate of HD releases, there are no extras.

Overall

In terms of bonus content, Sony Pictures' recent US Blu-ray release of Underworld, which ports over most of the extras from the standard definition release of the extended cut, is definitely preferable. For those who are restricted to HD DVD only, however, this release provides a magnificent audio-visual presentation of the film that I struggle to imagine being bettered.