Underworld: Rise of the Lycans - Review

Six years ago Underworld brought an unimpressive vampire vs. werewolves story to theaters. Playing with far too frequently used archetypes and concepts, and featuring horridly filmed combat sequences, the result was underwhelming and disappointing. Now we get a prequel that shows us the back story that Underworld told the audience in its dramatic climax. Despite being material we’ve heard before, with no real twists to speak of, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is probably the best movie in the series, although that’s still not saying too much.

The third movie in the franchise backs up several centuries in the Underworld storyline, showing the origin of the Lycans, a breed of werewolf that starts with Lucian (Michael Sheen). The vampires breed the Lycans as protectors - slaves intended to protect the vampires during the harmful daylight hours. Through the events of the film, the werewolves rebel against their former masters, exactly as we’d been told before, and the war between the vampires and Lycans begins.

The key to Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is substitution - take the elements fans liked in the original movie and find a way to make them fit here. Instead of Kate Beckinsale, Rhona Mitra steps into the corset of the heroine, playing Sonja, who is the daughter to Viktor, the vampire leader (Bill Nighy). It also borrows the star-crossed lovers caught in a forbidden romance storyline from the previous movies, placing Sonja and Lucian, as the young couple, which is what leads to the beginning of the war as their secret passion is revealed.

Rise of the Lycans takes on a difficult task - tell a story we’ve already been told, without any possible threat really occurring for the main characters, since we know both of the mortal enemies, Lucian and Viktor, are around for the subsequent films. Despite that, the movie does a good job of telling its story, perhaps because it doesn’t try to throw any twists in or adjust the story from what fans know it to be. We were told the original story in the first Underworld, and the writers stay faithful to that 100%.

Somehow, the more primitive setting works better visually for this movie than the gothic take on the contemporary city did in the previous pictures. In particular, the ornate armor and garb of the vampires creates a really neat environment that feels a lot more true to the vampire culture the movies have established than the Matrix appearance the other movies have sported. The visuals aren’t perfect though, especially because that annoying inability to film combat sequences has been carried over from the other pictures. When the action starts, prepare to get dizzy and lose most of the context of what’s going on. The visual effects for the Lycans, which put me off from the first movie, look a little improved here as well, although that could be due to the fact that they mostly appear during the ill-filmed action sequences.

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans isn't solid enough to fully convert anyone unimpressed with the previous chapters, but this is definitely the strongest movie in the series and sure to please existing fans of the series, especially because it stays true to the pre-established history of the franchise. I would even go so far as to say I wouldn’t mind seeing another Underworld picture set in this era. Maybe a departure from the previous movie’s storyline and characters is exactly what this franchise needed.

Valkyrie - Review

Tom Cruise is back! But did he ever really go away? He's spent the last few years as more of a tabloid figure than a box office draw, but the magnetism and and intensity that made him a gigantic movie star have never left him. In Valkyrie he takes a role that could have turned ludicrous-- an American in an eyepatch playing a German hero-- and makes it riveting. That goes double for the movie itself, which once again proves Bryan Singer's unassailable skill as a director, crafting a suspenseful and exciting story out of an ignored bit of history.

The whole thing is made with a no-nonsense, stripped-down attitude you imagine John Wayne would appreciate. It starts with the accents-- everyone keeps their natural inflections, including Cruise, which makes for an interesting mix of Brits, Americans and Germans who still fit in together nicely. And except for a brief prologue set in Tunisia, where protagonist Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) loses his eye and most of his fingers in a air raid, the story sticks within the close confines of Berlin's military headquarters, where Stauffenberg and a cohort of conspirators use their insider status to plot Hitler's demise. Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) has already made a failed attempt on the Fuhrer's life with a bomb hidden inside a gift, and introduces Stauffenberg into his secret circle of conscientious objectors, including Olbricht (Bill Nighy) and retired general Beck (Terence Stamp). On the eve of D-Day in 1944, the group devises a scheme to defeat Hitler through use of the top-secret plan Operation Valkyrie.

The plan is a bit too complicated for proper explanation within the film, and involves a few too many characters to keep track of, but the basic details are pretty simple. If these guys can kill Hitler, Operation Valkyrie allows the military to take over the country due to a "national emergency." After getting Hitler to approve an edited version of Operation Valkyrie (in a particularly spine-tingling scene), Stauffenberg plans to set off a bomb at the Wolf's Lair, an enclosed bunker where Hitler held high-security briefings. Stauffenberg and the other conspirators enlist the help of telecommunications chief General Eric Fellgiebel (Eddie Izzard) and a more reluctant General Friedrich Fromm (Tom Wilkinson), who turns a blind eye more so than he provides any help.

There's one aborted assassination attempt before the real one takes place on July 20, and both are tightly scripted, expertly staged bits of action. Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie waste little time reminding us of the Serious Moral Implications of what Stauffenberg and company are about to do; the Hitler assassination angle is just a bonus element of what, in some sections, feels like a really good heist story. When the assassination appears to have succeeded, and Stauffenberg returns to Berlin to begin restructuring the government, the story expands without ever losing its sharp, pared-down efficiency.

Carice van Houten pops up in a fairly thankless role as Stauffenberg's wife, as the movie wisely moves most of the focus to the conspirators and the relationships among them. The performances are all strong if unexceptional, and Cruise fits right in, never letting an overacting tendency get the best of him. The script moves a little too swiftly sometimes when introducing these characters, and it's a good thing so many of them are famous, so that we can tell them apart. Except for a brief voiceover from Stauffenberg in the beginning, none of the men really express their precise oppositions to Hitler, and it's never clear how so many of them have served the German army for so long, and been so opposed to Hitler, without being found out.

But what keeps Valkyrie so light on its feet is an appreciation for history, not slavish devotion, so that timelines can be condensed and characters excised with the basic, thrilling story intact at its center. It doesn't have anything grand or new to say about World War II, other than revealing the existence of Germans who actively fought against Hitler during the war. But it's refreshing in its lack of pomp and circumstance, a movie that exists to be a movie and nothing bigger. Amid a flood of World War II movies this December, Valkyrie is by far the most entertaining and satisfying.