The Underneath

Ex-con and recovered gambler Michael Chambers returns home to Austin, Texas to attend his mother's wedding. He looks up the girlfriend that he walked out on many years prior, immediately causing problems with her criminally-inclined boyfriend. When his new father-in-law helps him get set up with a job driving an armoured car, things begin to look better for Michael but his desire for Rachel remains, sparking a cycle of events that run out of his control.

Working almost like a test bed for things he would do better later on, this film allowed the director to try various techniques and styles that didn't really work for him in this case. The plot unfolds in three different time periods are the same time, we are helped out by Michael having a beard in the earliest time periods. The point of these was to create a history for the characters and help keep the interest as we went by not knowing the past until it is significant (a trick he did again in Out of Sight). However here the characters are painted so flat that it's hard to notice any difference in them between the time periods. Also the actual past is quite straightforward and sheds light on nothing of real significance. This stalls the film for the majority and it only really gets going again towards the end, but even that is killed by a series of little twists that culminate in a final shot that simply doesn't make sense and was clearly a cheap way of ending the film on a dramatic note.

The direction is OK but perhaps a little heavy on the style. Constant shots through coloured glass makes it all look very clever but it doesn't add anything. At first I thought it was to help distinguish time period (all the armoured car stuff looks green) but then I realised he was just doing it when the mood took him. In Traffic, the emphasis on colour worked well between the three stories but here it just feels like a director trying too hard.

Gallagher is an OK actor but can't do much here to shed light on the character. We know that Michael is blessed with poor judgement but beyond that he is a mystery that even Gallagher seems incapable of getting in touch with. Elliot is pretty but also a flat character. The support cast is interesting as it has plenty of well known faces including Fichtner, Dooley, Baker and Shue but really the weakness at the top is the problem here.

Overall this is watchable despite it being a little slow and too stylish for it's own good. The overriding impression I got from watching it was that Soderbergh was trying out some ideas to work out what the weaknesses with them were. Add to this a quite straightforward story that is told in three timelines for no discernible benefit to the film and then a cheap series of dramatics when all else fails and you've got a film that doesn't tend to get mentioned in the same breath as his more recent hits.

With two sets of flashbacks, count them two sets of flashbacks interspersed throughout the movie the last one catching up to where the movie begins in the present, it just makes a garbled mess. Kind of like the last sentence.

I like Peter Gallagher and Elizabeth Shue, but she had such a small role and he couldn't save the convoluted mess that movie just seems to be told out of sequence like it is.

The cinematography is nice if that's any consolation! I bought my copy at Walmart for $5.50 and I can't honestly say I'll ever watch it again. I can't recommend it, but I won't condemn it either.

I saw this film as a part of a school course on film appreciation, focusing mostly on film-noir. It built slowly with a fascinating story, and honestly I was intrigued by many of the sequences especially the scene where the main character watches the football game and the rendezvous under the bridge.

I was also interested in all of the supporting characters like elizabeth shue's role and the smarmy brother.

The action toward the end built up to a climax that would bring it all together. And, the most I could say for the climax was that it did. But it also spiraled into a conventional, predictable, and altogether disappointing ending. I walked away unhappy with the whole experience.

This was the first time I was disappointed with Soderbergh's work, so for a more satisfying experience, in a similar genre, see The Limey.

I find 'The Underneath' to be a 'weird' movie, and I don't mean 'weird' in a good way. It's weird in a negative way, it just doesn't make sense in some parts, like the stranger in the hospital, or the hidden agendas of everyone in this movie.

I think the scriptwriter wanted to make this a cool-twisted thriller, but it came out as a mashed up incoherent drama.

Peter Gallagher was good and William Fichtner even better, but they were not enough to save this movie from being boring and incoherent. Too bad Elisabeth Shue didn't have more scenes and we didn't get to see more of Adam Trese's character which left more questions than answers.

I suggest you watch this movie only if you have nothing better to do.

Not really noir, as it is in color, so we can call it neo noir and be done with that.

Michael (Peter Gallagher), the prodigal son, returns home for his mom's wedding after being exiled for some past trouble. The flashbacks throughout the movie show us what happened, but it really doesn't matter.

What matters is the fact that he takes up again with his old flame, Rachel (Alison Elliott), who is now married to a local hood (William Fichtner), a fact she neglected to tell him.

To get out of trouble with the hood, he agrees to do an armored car robbery. His own brother (Adam Trese) suspects him.

One of director Steven Soderbergh's early works, it will not blow you away, but it will entertain you.

I suspect the ending will leave you furious.