Viewed: January 7, 2010I disagree with the mediocre reviews of this film here. People are over analyzing and unhappy with it's unconventional open ending. "The Underneath", is a kind of film that separates the popcorn entertainment crowd from the serious and studied film enthusiasts. A story does not always need to have a neat and tidy ending, wrapping all plot points up, to be good. This is an art film, about character, circumstance and mood, not a popcorn entertainment movie for the masses.A charming drifter with a gambling problem returns to what he feels is home, for the occasion of his mother's second wedding and attempts to reunite with an old girlfriend. He becomes involved in a love triangle, then a crime, to help rescue his old girlfriend from a seemingly bad new marriage. The film is about a present day armored truck robbery and told entirely in flashback: all the people and circumstances that lead up to it. Daniel Fuchs and director Soderbough, under the ghost writer name (Sam Lowry), wrote the screenplay to the film. It's a well observed, insightful character and relationship study, of people mixing together in bad circumstances and the inevitable and inescapable outcome that results.This is very much a director and writers film. Both are very good. Director Soderbergh, "Sex, Lies and Videotape", 1989, is well in command most of the time, effectively setting up and executing scenes of mood and uncertainty. Creative cinematography, involving unusual camera angles, framing and color are frequently used in the film, for a film noir (mystery) look.The sequence in the hospital near the end is especially effective, creating a sense of fear, worry, uncertainty and dread. The most interesting and engaging aspect of the film is, the audience is never certain who can be trusted and for how long, in this complex web of human desire and fear.I haven't seen this film since it was first released theatrically in 1995. My favorable impression still holds after a long delayed second viewing.

Soderbergh's showoffy stylistics (color filters, flashbacks, first-person point-of-view shots) try - and mostly fail - to "spice up" a cliched and insignificant plot. Don't bother looking for anything fresh in this movie, it's the same old drifter-back-to-his-hometown / femme fatale / dangerous husband / heist-gone-wrong / last-minute-betrayal storyline. Peter Gallagher's detached, almost catatonic approach seriously affects the movie, but Alison Elliott shines playing the most complex by far character in the film and William Fichtner impresses even in his completely stereotypical bad-guy role. (**1/2)

Everyone, including Soderbergh I guess, likes to beat this one up... First of all, there is no such thing as too much style for this genre... secondly, the only bad neo-noir is the one that doesn't get made (except for that Val Kilmer piece of crap, Salton Sea)... and finally, YORK peppermint patties rock...

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.