Sheen flick Lycan-ed to vampire realm

Fans of the traditional vampire movie genre will more than likely get a kick out of Underworld, the feature film debut from long-time commercial and music video director Len Wiseman. But the operative word here is traditional.\nThe film takes place in a gritty, unnamed metropolis (it was shot in Budapest, Hungary) during the peak of a war that has raged for 1,000 years between vampires and werewolves (here known as "lycans"). Vicious and voluptuous vamp Selene (Beckinsale), known as a death dealer, targets a human (or is he?) named Michael Corvin (Speedman) to save from a capture attempt by lycans, and a long and seemingly drawn-out-of-a-hat back-story eventually unfolds to explain the werewolves' obsession with Selene's pseudo love interest. \nIt's all here -- the silver bullets, the daylight factor, the full moon metamorphoses and more blood sucking than a naked roll through a tick-infested jungle.\nConsidering the film's mere $23 million budget (which, Beckinsale aside, was obviously not spent on attaining quality actors), special effects and elaborate set pieces abound, Wiseman's directing is actually the best I've seen in a long while, at least this year. He effectively creates a world almost drained of color like a vampire's prey drained of lifeblood, save for a few blacks, grays and haunting blue tints throughout. The lycans are believably ferocious, even almost entirely without the use of computer-generated imagery. \nThe unfortunate downside to all of this is that there's really nothing new here in the way of storyline. True, the vampires are fighting the werewolves and humans play a relatively small role, but the majority of character traits and plot narratives rest on been-there-done-that movie mythology, and the dialogue assumes the viewer is at least fairly well-versed in such vampire lore. But hey, maybe that's the intention here. Even Selene's monologue that explains her motives for becoming a lycan death dealer is an eye-rollingly overused fallback. It's as if the writers are operating in awe of everything that came before, and are afraid to overstep the bounds that predecessors like Blade,The Matrix, Batman, The Crow and too many others to name here provided. \nNevertheless, if you're in the market for a fun and fairly mindless action/horror flick, please don't let that stop you. The directing, action sequences, and overall visuals are enough to keep it from completely sucking (sorry, I had to).