Jolt star Kate Beckinsale is no stranger to the action genre, but how many of the Underworld star’s many efforts in the genre are worth a watch? Kate Beckinsale recently returned to screens with Jolt, an action-comedy co-starring Jai Courtney. With a wild premise that borrows from Jason Statham’s still underrated cult classic Crank, Jolt sees Beckinsale’s anger-prone antiheroine sent on a bloody rampage through the criminal underworld when her friend is murdered.
Unfortunately for Beckinsale, critics were not kind to Jolt. Like the similar movie Kate, the thriller received negative reviews that called Jolt too unoriginal to stand out in a crowded field of female-led action movies. Luckily, Jolt is far from the actor’s first foray into action—and it’s not the first Kate Beckinsale action effort to receive largely negative reviews either.
While Beckinsale’s early career was defined by acclaimed turns in literary adaptations like Cold Comfort Farm or thoughtful Indies like The Last Days of Disco, the actor took a turn for the more commercial—and bone-crunching—when choosing roles after 2003. The one-two punch of 2003’s Underworld, a supernatural thriller, and 2004’s Van Helsing, a gothic action-comedy-horror hybrid from The Mummy director Stephen Sommers, saw Beckinsale become the action heroine du jour in Hollywood circa the mid-‘00s. Hard-edged roles in Contraband and the Underworld sequels soon followed, and eventually, Beckinsale earned a major role in the sci-fi action remake Total Recall. Unfortunately for the actor, most of these action movies were met with critical disinterest or outright derision upon release -- with varying degrees of fairness. With that in mind, which of Beckinsale’s action efforts are worth a watch, and which of them is the best?
9. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
The Underworld series pit vampires against werewolves long before Twilight ever offered a PG-13, romance-oriented iteration of this age-old battle, but the series had well and truly run out of steam by 2009’s third installment Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. Released around the same time as the second Twilight movie New Moon and starring that sequel's villain Michael Sheen, this prequel to the series has nothing new to offer other than the unlikely and welcome spectacle of Sheen nailing the role of a werewolf antihero. Evidently, Beckinsale was not overly impressed with the third movie either, only appearing in a brief cameo at the close of the film.
8. Underworld: Blood Wars
Marginally better than its predecessor, 2016’s fifth Underworld movie was still sufficiently uninteresting to kill off the franchise seemingly for good. If this outing does prove to be the swan song of the series it will be a fitting one, as Underworld: Blood Wars is as confusing, drab, and convoluted as the franchise always was in its worst moments. Without any of the HBO hit True Blood’s campy humor or Twilight's melodrama, Underworld: Blood Wars’ increased gore quotient doesn’t do much to elevate the sequel. It is superior to the third movie if little else.
7. Total Recall
Released in 2012, Total Recall was (alongside 2014’s Robocop re-imagining) an entirely redundant remake of a perfectly solid Paul Verhoeven sci-fi satire that neutered the original’s dark humor, R-rated violence, and gonzo edge. Colin Farrell is wasted in the Arnold Schwarzenegger role. while Beckinsale is a superb recast of Sharon Stone's original role, though she's given little to do in this drab, lifeless PG-13 redo. Revisiting Total Recall’s trippy Philip K Dick adaptation in the age of the Internet could have been a transgressive thrill-ride to put sci-fi sature Black Mirror to shame, but this remake is, unfortunately, a miss from beginning to end.
6. Underworld: Evolution
Credit where it’s due, the Underworld series is not a franchise that simply grew worse as it wore on. Instead, Len Wiseman’s series peaked with the first movie, descended into boring, confusing territory with the second, and then returned to relatively worthwhile action in the fourth outing. Beckinsale is beguiling as Selene and her super-heroics almost salvage this sequel. However, the plot is needlessly obtuse, the lore impenetrable, and the action sequences are plagued by the wince-inducing GCI overuse of the mid-‘00s. With every scene viewed through a steely blue filter, Underworld: Evolution is an effective time capsule to a cringeworthy era of sci-fi action cinema. As a movie, though, this (marginally) bloodier version of Twilight is not really worth a watch.
5. Contraband
Released in 2012, Contraband boasts an impressive cast and not a lot else. Even though Diego Luna, Ben Foster, and Giovanni Ribisi all appear in supporting roles alongside Mark Wahlberg’s beleaguered hero, the crew of character actors can’t elevate this action-thriller beyond being merely watchable. Wahlberg is wooden as the family man who, after years out of the smuggling game, is inevitably pulled back in by plot contrivances for one last job. However, the real sin of Contraband is the movie’s criminal underuse of action veteran Beckinsale, who is largely relegated to a standard-issue action movie love interest role for the runtime.
4. Jolt
Jolt’s premise is superb—Beckinsale’s heroine is unstoppable once she accesses her unhinged side, but is held at bay by an electrified vest until she breaks free after the murder of a friend. The Suicide Squad star Jai Courtney offers solid support as the unfortunate friend and Beckinsale is superb in the central role, but reviewers, fatigued by one too many girlboss killer movies, have a point. While well worth a watch, Jolt doesn’t offer a lot that Atomic Blonde, Kate, and Gunpowder Milkshake haven’t all offered audiences recently. Even so, it's a more than watchable action effort.
3. Underworld: Awakening
Even fans of the Underworld series were reticent when a fourth film was announced in 2012, but Beckinsale’s return augured a serious increase in quality for the franchise. The fourth movie in a series can rarely compare to the first, but with more gore, stronger action, and an easier-to-follow plot, Underworld: Awakening is an unexpected return to form for the franchise. The werewolves versus vampires action is still a little reminiscent of some of the decade’s worst action horror movies, but this remains a solid watch and one of Beckinsale’s best in the genre.
2. Van Helsing
Wildly underrated since its 2004 release, the campy action-adventure movie Van Helsing is a self-consciously silly reinvention of the title character that reimagines him as a Victorian-era James Bond. As this premise implies, it’s not for everyone. However, Stephen Sommers’ assured grasp of action-comedy serves him well as the plot moves at a clip, and Beckinsale has stellar chemistry with Hugh Jackman’s affable antihero. An unnecessary and tonally jarring last-minute twist keeps this one from the top spot, but it is essential viewing for action fans and anyone checking out the Beckinsale’s oeuvre.
1. Underworld
A surprise sleeper hit upon its 2003 release, Underworld is another vampire movie but one that couldn’t be further from Van Helsing’s campy “Bram Stoker’s Dracula but with jokes” tone. A sharp, dark thriller, Underworld sees Beckinsale star as the brutally efficient vampire Selene, who is caught up in an eons-old war between werewolves and her kind. When she falls for a man who is becoming a werewolf, Selene is forced to reconsider her loyalties as a fast-paced effective action plot merges with some stunning gothic visuals. Unusually visually inventive for a sci-fi action horror, Underworld is a treat for the eyes, though much of the movie's success and charisma would disappear without Kate Beckinsale’s superb central turn as the icy antiheroine.