Review of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009) by Christopher J — 23 Jul 2010

The underworld-movies have never been known for their originality or a tight script (I know! What a shock!) but the entertainment value has always been there and just strangely powerful, specially in the first movie, number two was a bit lazy but I still mildly enjoyed it althought it's was as pointless as a vodka bottle is to a baby..

You have heard people talk about how pointless some sequels are, or like here prequels and they have a point. In fact I have said that many times my self. Most sequels are pointless but I am pretty sure that this one is most pointless of all movies that have been made in the universe. Why? I ask why!. Because we haven't seen this story before? NO!

The people who saw this movie new from the start were this predictable story was going and another thing that bugged me, there is nothing to fill in the empty parts or give you a little side story to enjoy or simply something to surprise you while you go through this long and pointless film. We know the war between Wolfs and vampires won't end here, We now that both Viktor (Bill Nighy) and Lucian (Michael Sheen) survive, We know Sonja dies and how!!. Is there something left? Even the Star Wars prequels weren't this predictable.

Underworld 3 (let's just call her that) has a couple of things going for her. She looks good, the visuals are very cool. Bill Nighly is also one of the things that make it more tolerable too watch. He seems to enjoy playing Victor and does it quite nicely, even though you could call him on overacting sometimes. Michael Sheen has become much better actor in my eyes over the last years specially after seeing him in Frost/Nixon, were he did a fantastic job. Here he does pretty well also, even though he doesn't have a lot to work with he keeps the character lively. Doomsday-girl Rhona Mitra does her best to keep the same expression on the whole way through, and I have nothing too complain about her performance.

The movie is directed by Patrick Tatopoulos, who worked on the other two as a monster designer. Tatopoulos does nothing new with the material and he mostly just copy's the atmosphere from the first one. The cinematography is also pretty much the same.

If Nighly wasn't in the basics of this movie, this would have gone straight on DVD were it belongs. It's the most cheapest of the series and far from being the most ambitious.

1/5.