Kate Beckinsale leads the leather-clad cast as Selene, a vampire with a thirst for killing werewolves. She opens the movie in voiceover and then dives into a subway for 15 minutes of gunplay with a few targeted werewolves. The sets of this movie continue to be, as the title would suggest, mostly underground and very well done.
After the bloody opening scene, Selene retreats to the home of her vampire clan, a coldly beautiful Victorian castle where the night dwellers exist in perpetual decadence and hedonism. There she quarrels with her boss, Craven (Shane Brolly, looking like the sixth Menudo) who is more interested in partying than in killing.
Selene's restlessness eventually leads her to seek out Michael Corvin (Scott Speedman), whom she believes the werewolves are after. Chaos ensues.
The problem with the film is that it tries to do too much. More effective thrillers like "Blade" and "From Dusk 'til Dawn" were primarily concerned with vampire action and campy one-liners, and refused to take themselves too seriously. The makers of "Underworld" tried to map out a complicated history between vampires and werewolves (which involves more double-crossing than anyone can follow), raise moral questions (mostly involving inter-species breeding) and cultivate a romance between Selene and Michael.
The romance suffers the most, existing merely as Beckinsale and Speedman exchange a few deep stares. The history of vampires and werewolves is better developed, elaborately played out through flashbacks and narratives, but it seems almost too rich for the vapid major characters.
The movie creates a three-dimensional world that its one-dimensional vampires and werewolves are too flimsily written to fill. Most of the dialogue is stale and the interesting relationships that the movie suggests are never developed.
All of this would be forgivable if the action and special effects were better. This movie subscribes to the notion "if we dress like 'The Matrix,' we are 'The Matrix.'" Leather is flashed, sunglasses donned and incredible jumps made. However, the budget apparently wasn't on par with that of "The Matrix," reflected in the gunplay and choreography. The fight scenes have little pop, the shootouts are chaotic and sometimes incomprehensible, and the few attempts at "bullet-time," the freeze frame technique pioneered by "The Matrix's" Wachowski brothers, look like cheap knock-offs. The vampires' and werewolves' powers are never clear, either. It seems that vampires have sharp teeth and can jump high, but werewolves are stronger, faster and nastier. However, the vampires consistently have the upper hand, which suggests that the werewolves are rather lacking in intelligence.
The movie's plot eventually centers around an attempt by the head of the werewolves, Lucien (Michael Sheen) to develop a cross breed between werewolves and vampires. He appears to be trying to end the feud, but the movie doesn't treat his "give peace a chance" ideals with much respect. Instead, it hits us with an uber-violent 30-minute climax that alternates between brilliance and clutter, and culminates in a slugfest so lackluster that one wonders if the choreographers were on a lunch break when the segment was edited.
Ultimately, "Underworld" suffers from an overabundance of ideas and an inability to execute. One gets the feeling that it is a few good writers and a few million dollars away from being a blast-it just ends up being another vampire flick whose bark is worse than its bite.