Movie Review: Undercover (warning, actual title, mostly)
Undercover (1994) is not a foreign film, but it might have been.
It features a very young and very short-haired Kate Beckinsale. Now, you may be thinking, "Wow, Kate Beckinsale's hot! Man, I so can't wait to see this film! Early Beckinsale? Excellent, this is gonna rock! I'd watched the hell out of my copy of Pearl Harbor and even my copy of Serendipity so that there are little fuzzy lines all over the screen now due to tape fatigue or something, even though it's a DVD..."
I would strongly recommend against seeing it in this sort of mood.
To which you might still be thinking, "Wow! Early Kate Beckinsale! Back before she was really famous! When I might have had a chance with her! Cool!"
No, I've gotta tell you. Calm yourself down. Really. Don't make me pull out the spoiler.
"But KATE BECKINSALE!! WOOOOO! I saw Van Helsing for her!"
All right, here's the spoiler: she has the most outrageous, shocking, and horrific amount of armpit hair you've ever seen. And to drive the point home, she walks around for an entire scene with her arms above her head, fixing her hair, waving her hands wistfully in the air at dust motes or something, tidying shelves above eye level, swinging from the door jamb. Basically whatever you can do to sufficiently air out your pits, she does. Once you've seen that the whole film and your whole perception of Kate Beckinsale is forever changed. The world you previously inhabited, in which Kate Beckinsale was an attractive young woman, perhaps considered hot, in some circles, is forever gone, replaced by giant big tufts of armpit hair.
This is probably one of those films Kate wishes hadn't happened, but probably did have to happen, in order for her to hone her craft, or something along those lines. Because she is awful in this film. She delivers her lines with all the aplomb of someone playing that game where you splay your fingers out on a table or some other hard surface and thunk a knife point down between each of your fingers in succession faster and faster until you either a) lose a finger and stop because your hand being thunked around moves when you curl up in a ball on the floor or b) you chicken out and pretend you've been nicked just slightly and press the hand as hard as you can to make it flush slightly more red as if you might have been hit.
It's not pretty. And that was all before the armpit hair.
The film is mostly about a painting, which is being restored by Kate's character for an ancient family, so that they can sell it off and pay off the debts, finish the castle, and move on with their lives. The painting is of the ancestors of this family, and is surrounded by mystery. A few tricks of the painting restorers' trade reveal a bit of Latin, which reads, "Who killed the knight?" And there happens to be a knight in the painting. Playing chess against a nobleman, who, luckily and as with all the people in the painting, happens to be labeled. The wife of the nobleman stands behind himself, watching the game.
In modern days, Kate's character gets permission from the diseased old man with a really bad case of emphysema to scrape away the paint covering up the inscription. While she chats with the otherwise charming old posh British-sounding guy in a wheelchair (other than the hacking coughs and incessant winking) the old man's daughter looks on with contempt. Not thinly veiled, but active and something that is definitely not veiled. She is accompanied by her young stud of a husband, who prances around a lot and has an accent straight out of Feltham. And is having an affair with Kate's boss, who is played by Sinéad Cusack. For those not familiar with Feltham, let's just say it's a bit rough. Aw'ight? Know wha I mean, like?
Somewhere in there, someone dies. So what do they do? For the love of all that's holy and good, what do they do!? (It's a suspense film, what can I say?)
They go get a gypsy Irish-sounding kid who astonishes with his chess prowess against a Marcel Marceau-looking Frenchmen replete with beret, of course.
And the filmmakers sort of forget to keep cutting back to the French knight and the nobleman at the castle, and it is probably for the best, to be honest. Especially since we're all caught up in how the hell this chess game is going to play out!
About halfway through the film, in the middle of the restoration and meeting the family, it will probably dawn on you that, despite the various accents and physical traits of the different characters, that these people are all supposed to be Spanish. Or at the very least something a lot like Spaniards. This is probably the point at which the Irish kid shows up, and you begin to think about "other things" — the laundry you need to do, marvelling at the amount of dirt stuck in your fingernails, staring at the paint on the walls, trying to determine if the slight buckling is intentional or is the result of water damage. And you begin to think about things not entirely related to the plot.
This film, by the way, is based on a novel. I'm just throwing that out there.
So the film careers along, hither and thither, people hook up with each other, Kate's loudly gay guardian flounces in and out of the apartment, and generally cares for her very much.
And then, thankfully, in a scene that will make you laugh, it's over.
And you should put the ladder away once you're done with it, if you do go and fetch it to try and figure out whether or not the paint has bubbled due to water damage or is a sort of intentional design.
disclaimer:
Don't worry, Sane Magazine has not been kidnapped by evil movie reviewers from, well, wherever, We just had this new kid we've hired to do the occasional movie review, and he had a few backed up. Hell, this one's from 1994, so you've got to figure he's had this all pent up inside for ages. It's not healthy, I tell you.
We're back next week, with something. It may be more movie reviews, it may not.
Who knows?
You'd think we would, but then we like to keep you on your toes like that.