With
Underworld:
Rise of the Lycan's
we're treated with a prequel to the
series of vampire vs. werewolves
series and we're treated with the
storyline of how the Lycan's, or
werewolves that can take human form
came to be and came to be such a
threat to the vampires.
Our story
begins with Lucian- the first of the
Lycans being born and Viktor the
king of the vampires.
When
Lucian was born Viktor couldn't
bring himself to kill the infant.
This came back to bite him in the
face.... literally. From there the
story tells of Lucian's rise from
being a slave of Viktor to being a
full-out badass leader of the lycans.
A couple of things about this movie
are awesome. First up with the
exception of a few predictable lines
this thing was written really well.
Overall it had a nice script. And
for being a prequel with no 'major'
names, it had some decent acting to
it. Nothing was over the top bad.
The closes thing that came to a
little over the top was with Kevin
Grevioux's performance as Raze but
the guy has such an awesome voice
that it made up for it.
Seriously.... Grevioux's voice makes
Michael Clark Duncan seem like a 10
year old boy- I think your subwoofer
is dedicated to the dude with Dolby
surround on this disc.
So the script
is great and the acting was good as
well but there are a few things that
suffer slightly. The first has got
to be the special effects. No harm
meant to anyone and it doesn't take
away that much from an otherwise
good movie, but in some places they
are straight-up awful and the wolves
take a couple of scenes to warm up
to. The other thing that's a bit of
a bummer with this movie... no Kate
Beckinsdale kicking ass in
leather... that was awesome in the
first two
Underworld
movies, and I missed it in this one.
Rhona Mitra does a good job playing
Sonia but the movie is more about
Micahel Sheen playing the role of
Lucian. A badass dude to be sure...
but he's not Kate Beckinsdale.
Underworld:
Rise of the Lycans
was a movie that probably had the
recipe to be a disaster of a flick,
but somewhere after the first 15
minutes it wins you over with the
power of the story and the people
telling it. Director Patrick
Tatopoulos brought a ton of energy
to the franchise and the script and
the acting pushes it over the top.
It suffers from things that prequels
and movies like this suffer from but
far less that one might thing and it
succeeds in ways it's supposed to.
This is a movie that's a must watch
if you're a fan of the franchise.
And it's a must own if you've seen
the previous two and loved them
because there's a bundle of the
three movies together. This is a
surprise and a pleasant one at that.
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