Once the rumors for Christopher Nolan's last Batman movie started popping up and there were rumblings about Catwoman being used, I was hoping to see Kate Beckinsale take the role. She would have been my personal choice, but Nolan decided to give that role to Anne Hathaway instead. Although Beckinsale won't get to play Selina Kyle, she does get to star as Selene again in Underworld Awakening, which is the fourth installment of the Underworld movie series.
After Selene (Beckinsale) escapes imprisonment, she enters a world where humans have discovered the existence of both the Vampire race and the Lycans. The humans are now on a mission to eliminate both groups and also find a cure for what they consider a disease. Selene has to fight for her life and get to the bottom of what may turn into a full-blown conspiracy.
Outside of an interesting opening sequence that explains the movie's plot, Underworld Awakening got off to a faulty start. They start by showing humans destroying the Vampires and Lycans in an attempt to wipe them out. How is it possible that the humans are dominating and killing vampires and Lycans in the first place? According to Underworld, the Lycans are extremely strong, aggressive and dangerous. The Vampires are not as strong, but they are much stronger than humans and are so fast that they can appear to vanish at times while moving. I can understand being able to take down the Lycans using silver bullets or whatever to get rid of them, but what about the vampires? Those guys are almost impossible to kill right?
To make matters worse, Selene starts mowing down all of these humans by herself time she hits the screen. This would make sense if the part in the paragraph above didn't happen. The weapons being used were killing the vampires at one point, but they just seem to be useless against her. I don't know how that is supposed to make sense. You're easily killing a bunch of vampires early on, but now one of them is slicing through a whole gang of humans at once? This was just one of the many inconsistencies in Underworld Awakening that I can point out. There are more, but discussing them would ruin it for anyone who wants to see it.
Despite all of that, the action was solid at times and at least watchable at its worst. If that's the only thing that you want to see then you might like this movie. The problems mainly arise from the movie having holes in nearly every possible aspect of the film and having things contradict themselves so often. I was kind of surprised at how many holes the film had and how they didn't even appear to try to cover them up. It was kind of weird when you think about it.
There wasn't much acting in Underworld Awakening, because it really wasn't necessary. The only person that failed in that department was India Eisley. I don't know if I can truly say that she was behind the failure, because her character was just bad and it seemed like it was more out of a TV-14 cartoon than an R rated movie. She did however pull off a believable British accent.
Speaking of accents, what country were they supposed to be in? Based on the license plates in the film, I think they were in Europe, but I don't know for sure. Eisley and many others had British accents, but Michael Ealy and Stephen Rae had American accents. Ealy was supposed to be a detective, but what are the chances of an American being a cop in Europe? Eisley's character was supposed to be born in a laboratory and never let outside, but if they're in America, how would she get a British accent? I guess you can say that this was just another one of the movie's inconsistencies.
Since I like Beckinsale and Ealy was in one of my favorite TV shows, I wanted this to succeed. That didn't happen and I have to fault the director and a terrible script for that. I wasn't surprised that Underworld Awakening didn't include much substance, but I would've expected a better effort from the creators of the film. It looks like they didn't even try and that sucks in reality. If they make another one, I hope they have more quality to put around the solid action. If they do, then it will most likely be a good movie.
Score: 2/5
Rating: R
Director: Måns Mårlind
Cast:
Kate Beckinsale
Stephen Rea
Michael Ealy
Theo James
India Eisley
Snadrine Holt
Film Length: 88 minutes
Release Date: Jamuary 20, 2012
Distributor: Screen Gems
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