The Films of Len Wiseman
The music-video-to-features pipeline is a popular one, it did particularly well in the late nineties to early aughts, and action film directors, already accustomed to the destruction of our attention spans, were often the ones who made transition most successfully. Born in Fremont in 1953, Wiseman started working in movies as a prop assistant, created ads for studio clients including Sony, then helmed videos for the likes of En Vogue and Megadeth. His feature debut, Underworld, wasn’t well received by critics but it did spawn a franchise that is still, I think, going. He moved on to a Die Hard sequel, a disappointing Total Recall remake and, most recently, a film in the John Wick universe that brought Anjelica Huston back to the big screen (and which I thought was fun!)
Underworld (2003)
Rating: BBBB
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Scott Speedman, Bill Nighy, Michael Sheen, Shane Brolly, Erwin Leder, Sophia Myles, Robbie Gee, Kevin Grevioux, Zita Görög, Scott McElroy, Wentworth Miller, Dennis Kozeluh, Hank Amos, Sandor Bolla, Todd Schneider, Jázmin Dammak
Kate Beckinsale plays a member of an army of vampires whose centuries-long war with Lycans (werewolves) comes to a standstill with the arrival of an innocent human male (Scott Speedman). She develops strong feelings for him, which are conflicted when she discovers that he’s the key player in the Lycans’ strategy and their new golden boy. The script never runs out of interesting characters, the story develops remarkably well, and the makeup and visual effects are excellent. A highlight moment is Bill Nighy’s incredibly good supporting role as the recently exhumed father of all vampires.
Underworld: Evolution (2006)
Rating: BB
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Lily Mo Sheen, Scott Speedman, Tony Curran, Derek Jacobi, Steven Mackintosh, Shane Brolly, Bill Nighy, Zita Görög, Brian Steele, Andrew Kavadas, Kayla Levins, John Mann
Vampiress/action-babe Kate Beckinsale dons her faux Catwoman suit once again to go head to head with the criminal world of undead monsters in this unimaginative sequel to the fun original. She and vampire/lycan hybrid Scott Speedman are on the run from baddies of all sorts as they try to put an ancient blood feud between two brothers, the originators of the races of vampires and lycans (werewolves), to rest. Along the way, they have badly choreographed sex, go on the requisite loud car chases that these films require, and shoot a billion bullets into people who are supposed to be immortal. It’s really unfortunate that in a film about vampires and werewolves the filmmakers use guns as weapons, the staple of action movies about normal people, when they could have thought of something much more creative. The excitement of the original is gone, replaced here by endless dialogue that tries to venture into Anne Rice territory but never really gets off the ground, and massive amounts of blood and gore that inspire your desire for a bucket of Vim much more than they touch on your deepest, darkest fears.
Live Free Or Die Hard (2007)
Rating: BB.5
Cast: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Maggie Q, Kevin Smith, Cliff Curtis, Jonathan Sadowski, Željko Ivanek, Christina Chang
Bruce Willis makes an attempt to get back on top of the action game by resurrecting a franchise after twelve years. Years after his divorce from his wife, he is now living in Brooklyn and trying to reconnect with his fully estranged daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). One night after interrupting her date with a semi-boyfriend, Willis is asked to do a routine pick-up of a computer hacker (Justin Long) who turns out to have some pretty dangerous friends: Willis’ mundane evening is turned into an action-packed roller coaster when Long’s apartment is attacked on all sides by countless gunmen and the two of them barely escape with their lives. It turns out his charge is actually connected with a web-based group of baddies who have hacked into the entire country and are, little by little, shutting down the United States Of America. McClane has dealt with this sort of megalomaniac evil before, so it’s not like we as an audience are particularly worried that he might not get the job done.
Willis is still a formidable action star, his years perhaps giving him more wisdom than is appropriate for this type of film but none of the sagging, bitter fatigue that seems to have accompanied Mel Gibson into his fifties. That said, this film is trying way too hard to appeal to the new kids by abandoning the sharp, grungy action of the earlier films and going stylish and high-tech with its editing and visuals. It mostly feels like they’ve taken a routine cop thriller and slapped John McLane’s name on just to sell it, and it doesn’t help that Timothy Olyphant as the head of the baddies isn’t nearly frightening or charismatic enough to live up to the villains in the series’ past.
Total Recall (2012)
Rating: BBBB
Cast: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, Bill Nighy, John Cho, Will Yun Lee, Dylan Scott Smith
A bored construction worker visits a virtual reality laboratory in order to enjoy a vacation in his dreams and is plugged into a network that makes his brain goes haywire that leads to him on the run for his life. It’s missing the bite of Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 version, but terrific action sequences and superb visual effects are a delight and more than make up for plot elements that are wholly ridiculous.
Ballerina (2025)
Rating: BBB.5
Cast: Ana de Armas, Victoria Comte, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Anne Parillaud, Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves
Anjelica Huston returns to the big screen in a major way in a sizeable supporting role in this John Wick spinoff, as the “director” of the secret Russian clan of hired killers who oversees the development of assassins who are just as skilled at the barre. The film is itself as a more than entertaining revisiting of revenge tales familiar to the action universe, the same old story of the forlorn orphan with haunted memories of dead parents and a rage that thankfully accompanies the ability to pull off some major stunts. Ana De Armas, always good at winning us over to her side, keeps things rolling as her character travels around the world in search of a Naziesque death cult whose leader (Gabriel Byrne) has an uneasy pact with Huston that our heroine is about to destroy. Keanu Reeves, serving as executive producer and likely nervous about making sure that offshoot picture connects with audiences (memories loom of Elektra after Daredevil), shows up to join the fight in the last third, though he only serves to remind us that all sequels to the superb original film are, even when enjoyable, never as good as their origin.