Verdict: A riveting fantasy film, drunk with Gothic stylings and dripping with bloody battles between vampires and werewolves.

By BOB LONGINGO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

But this movie is more than that. The surprisingly fine, involving “Underworld” echoes the muscular feel of “Aliens,” the relentless speed of “The Terminator” and the architectural colorlessness and operatic anxiety of “Dark City.”

To boot, it's got vampires fighting fang to claw with werewolves. How cool is that?

The ultra-Gothic “Underworld,” from first-time director Len Wiseman, far surpasses the bloodier, vampire-riddled “Blade” and is just plain artfully cool — as cool as a movie can be that imitates “Matrix” battle scenes as much as this one does. That will bother many a special effects fan.

Like Keanu Reeves and crew in “Matrix,” the svelte, ice-tempered vampires do walk resolutely in dark leather and sport super-long overcoats. They fire terrifically sleek revolvers that spit monster bullets in slow motion at their hulking prey. They do slo-mo back flips. They leap off skyscrapers to land gently on their metropolis' dingy streets.

Like too many action-adventure movies, all this could be way too much “Matrix”-ology. But “Underworld” is wilier than most, sidestepping all its obvious connections to the modern-day mother of all action films.

Partly, that's achieved with its first on-screen transformation of a human figure into a ferocious werewolf. Many may be reminded of “An American Werewolf in London,” but, simply put, it's awesome.

There's more. A vampire simultaneously flicking two whips. Bloody massacres in a sewer and on a train. Secret human experiments. “Underworld” just keeps churning and bellowing and swirling, flipping its Shakespearean story line and hurling violence, until a viewer simply can't stop watching.

Beckinsale, in a role that's the exact opposite of her unsure nurse in “Pearl Harbor,” is often mesmerizing as the stalwart Selene, the vampiric la femme executioner. She hunts werewolves who sneak about in human form.

Her story is wrapped in centuries of conflict between vampires and werewolves. For both sides, genocide appears to be the final solution. Into the fray falls Michael (Scott Speedman of TV's “Felicity”). He's simply a man, but he's being tracked by the werewolf hierarchy for mysterious reasons.

As Selene investigates, she develops a relationship with Michael that threatens her own vampire coven.

Sounds very comic book, doesn't it?

“Underworld” is. It's mythic and medieval, a deep, dark graphic novel wrapped in the filmy veneer of celluloid.

Director Wiseman sometimes does overstate his movie, in which human characters too often conveniently disappear. There are too many full-of-itself close-ups, too many operatic enunciations from its tortured characters. Even too much length. (At just over two hours, the movie seems slightly stretched.)

But there's more to say about a film that, after its opening narration, begins with a riveting subway shootout and gripping chase that closes with a seamy character spouting, “You're acting like a pack of rabid dogs.”

Fans of “Seven,” “Fight Club,” “Aliens” and the Orcs of “The Lord of the Rings” will likely chant, “Show us more.”