The Vow doesn't forget what it promises

The Vow (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Michael Sucsy. Starring Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum, Sam Neill.

A typical romance movie with just a little more depth than most.

Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) have the perfect married life until Paige wakes up from a car accident with no memory of anything from the past few years of her life, including her husband. Leo determines to win her back in what is (at least as far as we know) not an elaborate Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn Overboard-style scam.

As the loving husband, Channing Tatum has come a long way since last week when he was beating the hell out of Gina Carano in Haywire. But his character is not a picture of angelic devotion, either; it's easy to sympathize with his frustration and discouragement in dealing with Paige, who, deprived of the past 5-10 years of her life, has reverted to a shallower, less mature version of herself from her early 20s.

It's an interesting philosophical dilemma, and The Vow earns points for its somewhat two-sided take on the problem. The film is not just about Leo's quest to win Paige back, but also about the questions of whether the woman he married still exists and whether he should even want her back.

But this is still a conventional romance movie, existing to deliver conventional happily-ever-afters and joyful reunions in the rain, not to explore the metaphysics of identity.

And so the film's answer to the question of whether Paige is still the woman Leo married is "Of course she is," even if it has to pull a lot of last-minute personal transformations out of its butt to get her to that point.

Developments like this can't really be held against the film, which is only showing loyalty to its target audience. But they keep it from being anything greater than what it turns out to be: just another pretty good romantic drama.

Rated PG-13 for trite narration.
3.5 out of 5

Underworld: Awakening (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein. Starring Kate Beckinsale, Michael Ealy, India Eisley.

Idiotic but somewhat entertaining supernatural shoot-em-up.

Underworld: Awakening is the fourth film in a series about a ridiculous centuries-old battle between humans, vampires, werewolves, and yes, vampire-werewolves. By now, the humans have gotten wise to the pesky mutual genocide happening beneath their noses and begun a campaign to wipe out all members of both supernatural species, including vampire and series protagonist Selene (Kate Beckinsale).

Selene, who mostly solves problems by jamming knives into the necks of those problems, has understandably bad luck evading notice by humans while dressing exclusively in a skintight rubber jumpsuit and trenchcoat. She resorts to old habits and shoots, stabs, or does nauseating things to the skull cavities of everyone she meets without taking much time to find out whether or not they're nice people.

Underworld: Awakening is just about the grossest movie I've ever seen. While gore may be a staple of the genre, it's not often that a film dwells on it the way this one does. After gushing wounds are inflicted on everything in sight, the camera is jammed into them like a surgical probe, usually cutting back to the image once for good measure. (In terms of special effects, the gore looks like gore, but the creature effects leave much to be desired).

It's about as juvenile as films come, and matched in tastelessness only by the Resident Evil series.

But it's true to itself, and puts the surprisingly complex lore and absurd laws of physics the series has established to good use. When Selene survives an elevator falling on her head by shooting out its floor as it drops with a pair of machine pistols, it makes a certain sort of brilliant, twisted sense.

And while there is only the driest skeleton of a story and zero character development here, Underworld is short, quick, and to the point. It doesn't waste time in getting on with its business-its disgusting, disgusting business. When it's over, you might wonder where the time has gone and whether if perhaps, despite it all, you were entertained.

Rated R for vampire parenting.
3 out of 5