'Underworld': The horrors of war

The most interesting thing about the splashy horror film, "Underworld," is that, despite the claims of its publicity campaign, it's not really a horror movie at all -- nor is it the horror/erotic Romeo and Juliet story that's been billed in the fall previews.

MOVIE REVIEW

UNDERWORLD

DIRECTOR: Len Wiseman

CAST: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy

RUNNING TIME: 121 minutes

RATING: R for strong violence/gore and some language

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Crossroads 8 Cinema, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Issaquah 9, Longston Place 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Meridian 16, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center, Totem Lake Cinemas, Valley Drive-in, Woodinville 12

GRADE: B

Yes, there's a whiff of a star-crossed, Ann Rice-ian love story at its core. Yes, every character in the movie is either a vampire or a werewolf. And, sure, there's plenty of blood-letting, ghoulish attacks from dark corners and morphing, Lycian transformations.

But the thing is more properly a war movie. Its mythic horror characters fight each other not with fang and claw but with blazing machine guns and high-tech pistols firing bullets loaded with light-beams (against the vampires) and silver nitrate (against the werewolves).

The drama of its scenes deals not with suspense and creeping terror but with strategy and the legacy of ancient history. It's Shakespearean in its political machinations and closer to "Saving Private Ryan" and "Starship Troopers" than to "Dracula" or "The Howling."

As such, there's an epic silliness about it that the movie never quite overcomes. But it's also completely true to its style and sensibility, and it builds a furious, absorbing momentum that gradually just sweeps you away, almost against your will.

Set in some unnamed, rain-swept European city (it was filmed in Budapest), the movie takes place at the climax of a thousand-year-old blood feud between a coven of vampires and a pack of werewolves, and its story opens with a blistering shootout on a subway.


	Kate Beckinsale goes goth for "Underworld," a film that pits vampires against werewolves.

The main character is Selene (Kate Beckinsale), a beautiful young vampire with an itchy trigger finger, who stumbles upon and finds herself attracted to the object of this opening melee: a closet Lycan (Scott Speedman) who unknowingly holds the fate of the war in his bloodstream.

On this premise, first-time director Len Wiseman constructs a macabre combat movie that is essentially one long action sequence: a single adrenaline rush, punctuated by only a few tense breathing spaces that don't really serve as down time.

It's the kind of movie that, if you fail to get with it from the start, can be absolutely agonizing to sit through -- especially with a two-hour-plus running time. And if you blink, you can get lost in the complexity of its hastily established but narratively vital back story.

But, if you do get aboard, it's all strangely engrossing, and the film works as an exhilarating celebration of the gothic style. Indeed, it may be the first major film aimed primarily at the modern goth subculture -- with no concessions or condescending humor for the rest of us.

At the center of all this mayhem, Beckinsale makes a most stunning focus. With her flowing black coat and steely Taoist confidence, she may be a bit too obviously a female version of Keanu Reeves' Neo, but she's poetry in motion and she projects an exquisitely soothing intelligence and determination.

As the calcified elder of the vampire clan, Bill Nighy is even more effective. In fact, he creates a character of such awesome, malignant power that he single-handedly centers the movie and pulls off (considering he's best known as a comic actor) what could well be this movie year's most dazzling change of pace.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.