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Product Description
A woman working on an art restoration project finds herself in the middle of a murder mystery.SimilarProduct
Customer reviews
An underappreciated gem 
by .. Jack Flack (San Francisco)
A surprisingly good mystery with strong performances by the entire cast. This features Kate B. before the fake boobs and the fake attitude and she is delightful-possibly her best performance as an actress. Some have complained that the murder mystery is a bit contrived and of course it is--almost all murder mysteries are a bit contrived, but the intertwining of the old mystery with the new mystery is very well done. It's also a joy to see a movie which recognizes the existence of the game of chess.
One sour note is the first few minutes of the sound track which is an unbelievably wretched piece of music. Feel free to turn the sound off until there is dialogue. If you choose not to, don't say I didn't warn you.
THE SMOLDERING YOUNG KATE BECKINSALE by .. RBSProds (Deep in the heart of Texas)
Three and a half Stars, so I upgraded to Four Stars! "Uncovered" is murder mystery movie that is quite unusual. Unusual in that it covers a centuries old murder, all emanating from a silent source of clues, and the twists and turns keep coming from beginning to end. Beckingsale, an art restorer, finds herself in the unwitting and unwilling role of detective as well, presumably to drive up the cost of a painting that Beckinsale is restoring. I love the technique she uses to fend off unwanted male attention: a real effective technique! And watch for when she doesn't use it! LOL.
While the cast gives very good performances, this is the young Kate Beckinsale's movie to win or lose because she is in virtually every scene of substance: she is a FABULOUS actress! Sporting a fetchingly short boyish haircut, soulful eyes, and pouty lips that Angelina Jolie would love to have, she is the prototypical marvel of a young, pretty, totally compelling British actress. Oh, and there are some fascinating views of Barcelona. The story line gets somewhat muddled near the end, but who cares, watching the rangy Beckinsale eating up this movie is quite mesmerizing in and of itself. There is some tasteful moderate partial nudity and much profanity, but it's 'closed-captioned' so TV Guardian can filter the language. Great cinematography and excellent music. Well worth a look!! Three and a half Stars!!
A Very Clever Under the Radar Murder Mystery... by .. (Pasadena, CA USA)
Released in 1994, Kate Beckinsale plays the main character in this convoluted murder mystery. She's living in Barcelona and has just graduated from College and is working at home restoring a painting that looks like it was created some time in the fifteenth century. She gets a knock at the door and a delivery man gives her an infrared overlay that she had taken of the entire painting and she looks at it closely and discovers that underneath a layer of paint there lies an inscription which mysteriously says in Latin "who took the knight?" Of course, looking at the painting which is of two noblemen playing a game of chess with a young woman sitting in the background, using that interpretation of the Latin inscription it looks like the painting is a playful scene where the younger man on the left has stolen the knight from the board and the older man is crouching over the board and in a crotchety way is saying "what happened to the knight?" while the younger man is making eyes at the young woman in the background. Kate's character takes the overlay to her friend, an art dealer to look at and interrupts her friend getting, ahem... serviced by the husband of the woman who is the neice of the man who owns the painting. Kate's character shows the overlay to her friend and convinces her friend to take her to see the owner of the painting to ask him if they can have it tested to see if that inscription underneath the layer of paint is an original one. They visit the owner and tell him about the inscription and the owner tells them that the inscription really should be translated as "who killed the knight?" instead of "who took the knight?" and from then on the entire meaning of the scene being played out in the painting takes a more ominous tone introducing the first murder victim in the story: a knight represented in the painting from five hundred years ago.
Based on the book "The Flanders Panel" by Arturo Perez-Reverte who wrote "The Club Dumas" which the movie "The Ninth Gate" was based on, it is no surprise that there are a myriad of nuances that are included inside this story that make references to or are based on the intricate artwork from the high Gothic period right before the Renaissance. The world in which the painting was supposedly made is a Machiavellian world of intrigue, doublecrossing, cutthroats and murder. After the commissioner of the painting realizes that his friend, the young man in the painting, has been killed and because of forces outside of his control he's not able to publically accuse the murderer, he asks the painter to alter the painting in such a way that it depicts who the murderer is, but in a secret code. The code of course is played out in miniature in the chess game the two men are playing and in it each piece represents different players in the plot and eventually by hiring a young man to play the game itself backwards Kate's character is able to figure out who actually did in the end kill the knight in the past. Pretty soon, pieces from a very fancy chess set start to pop up outside of her door and she soon finds herself in the middle of her own little murder mystery as people in her own life start to drop like flies mirroring both the pieces that pop up in front of her door and the pieces that are taken if the chess game in the painting were played out to its logical conclusion. The chess game itself is a microcosm of the intrigue that occurred back in the fifteenth century and of the intrigue that is going on in the present. By going backwards, the young man Kate's character hires is able to figure out what happened in the past and by going forwards with the game itself from where the painter left it off in the fifteenth century the young man is also able to predict who the likely candidates for murder are going to be in the near future. The plot itself mirrors the chess game to a tee to the amusement of the audience to the point where one ends up thinking about which characters in the movie are represented by which pieces in the game and also how would the drama of the chess game where one piece can viciously take hold of or slaughter another piece be played out in real life.
In my opinion, this is much better than the movies you'd see Kate Beckinsale play characters in today. From her choice of movie roles today compared to back when this movie was made one sort of has to wonder where her career priorities have turned to lie. If you disliked the blander, more commercialized and more static roles that she's played from more recently then you might not like this movie that much; but if enjoy a good thriller with a cleverly written thoroughly amusing plot then this is probably the movie for you!
Good mystery entertaining story by .. Scott Law (Parkville, MD USA)
Uncovered is a fun film with some interesting intrique and a solid plot. Kate Beckinsale is excellent as Julia the woman who has to restore an old painting and finds more than she bargained for. It isn't a deep film but it has a unique atmosphere and of course the divine Kate. Definitely entertaining. It's got something different about it.
Good movie by .. Pablo Nadal Moron (Madrid, Madrid Spain)
This movie has a good plot, good actors, plenty of mystery and the beauty of one of my favorite actresses: Kate Beckinsale. Maybe it's not one of those movies with plenty of violence, chases and a lot sex (...), but it's an interesting movie. And made in the best city of Spain: Barcelona.