While in India, we decided to see one Indian film ("Don 2"), and one American film. That American film was "Underworld-Awakening."There's a bigger story here than "Underworld: Awakening" (obviously, since no one is talking about this flick), but first, the movie. The fourth "Underworld" film has something to do with returning vampire heroine Selene (Kate Beckinsale), who starts the movie trying to help out returning beau Michael (Scott Speedman) in a nameless big city but her efforts land her in a lab, at the hands of a mad scientist (Stephen Rea, a LONG way from "The Crying Game") bent on werewolf world domination months or years after landing in said lab. After breaking out 30 screen seconds later, we find out that Selene has a daughter (India Eisley), her kind is on the verge of extinction, and the mad scientist has a deep, dark secret that was revealed too late for Meg or I to still care. Through the entirety of its 80-minute running time, lots of people get shot, some unfortunate souls get maimed, and a few people keep changing from human to Lycan in particularly cool transformation sequences. Even I have to admit--some of the special effects here are sweet.
But, none of this really matters and the movie is over quickly. Here's the bigger story, at least as it occurs to me while sitting in a Kate Beckinsale film--why isn't Kate Beckinsale a bigger star? After doing what appears to be a ton of British TV shows, she appeared in "Brokedown Palace", and then "Pearl Harbor", a movie that obviously put her in front of millions of eyeballs as the love interest of the Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett characters. That should have been the springboard, and to some degree it was; "Serendipity" followed that and after a couple of smaller films, the first "Underworld" was released and a small base of fanboys built up that film as what (even I now admit) should have been the start of a junior-sized Angelina Jolie-like career. But...it never happened. Some thoughts on why:
- Kate Beckinsale is offered, or chooses, really shitty scripts. Also attributing to the fall of Kevin Spacey, Megan Fox, Josh Hartnett or hundreds of other actors, Beckinsale's overall list of films is shockingly poor given that she is still offered the chance to lead multimillion-dollar potential blockbusters. After the first "Underworld", here's what we have: "Van Helsing" (cue Gordon "The Professional" Stokes shouting "VAN HELSING!!!!" and all of us looking at the floor), "Underworld: Evolution" (terrible), "Click", "Snow Angels", "Vacancy" (not bad, but not really a movie that would have dug her out of a hole), and five movies made during 2008-2009 that no one is talking about (this included a bit part for her in the third "Underworld" film, pointing to her career demise that she isn't even the star of the third movie). Sprinkled in is a supporting role in "The Aviator", which doesn't even make sense given the other films on this list.
- Kate Beckinsale isn't as hot as I think she is. Let's face it--this is a cruel world. Actresses who rely heavily on their looks don't have a long Hollywood shelf life. I don't like it either, but at least this is consistent. Given that, I really thought that Beckinsale would be in everything for a few years because she was so pretty. The mistake I think I made is that now I realize Kate Beckinsale isn't very sexy. Her look is striking, but she never shows up as the sultress, the perky office assistant, the scantilly-clad rocket scientist. It's always prim, proper, stiff, bland (i.e., British); even in the "Underworld" films, she could get away with a lower-cut leather jumpsuit, couldn't she? Beckinsale is British--and she has good teeth, for chrissakes!!!--but she is constantly playing Americans...don't Americans like hot foreign accents?
- Kate Beckinsale is actually a terrible actress. This is the real tragedy with Beckinsale, and another one of my mistakes in evaluating her talent...she doesn't have the charisma to be a big star, and without addressing the sex appeal and without being offered edgy scripts like some of her contemporaries (fact: Jennifer Garner has a small part in "Pearl Harbor" and she had the chance to be a part of "Alias", which really launched her career), relying on talent when you don't have any makes it tough for anyone was a passing knowledge of good acting believe in you. If you rewatch "Pearl Harbor" (Meg and I did this on our India trip) or even "The Aviator", watching Beckinsale match chops with other performers does leave you wondering a bit.
- Kate Beckinsale is a "working-class" actress. Remember Anna Kournikova? The hot tennis star who never seemed to ever win any championships? How about Benjamin Bratt, the good-looking gent who has been the love interest for any number of major actresses in their leading roles? Sometimes, it's okay to just take the check...in fact, I really respect it. It seems like Beckinsale took a couple of years off prior to "Underworld: Awakening", maybe to raise a family or go on a mission and build a church. Who knows? Maybe the expectations some of us had for Beckinsale's career were outside of her own interests, which were to use her looks and minimal acting talent to make some money and retire to the British countryside. Shit, Nic Cage has been doing that for years.
Rating: Rental
