|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
"Doomsday"
is intriguing, I guess, but it doesn't really give us anything new
as far as plot and genre are concerned. Everything from "Resident
Evil" to "28 Days Later" to "I Am Legend"
to "Escape from New York" to the "Mad Max" films
are sampled to some degree, and this is annoying because "Doomsday"
isn't a spoof or even a tribute. It's really just a rip off, and
what's worse, it's a rip off that focuses more on violence than
on story. There's pretty much nothing to get out of it, save for
a few fun moments of blood and gore. I'm not going to say that this
is a bad film, because the idea it's founded on has been successfully
done before. But I will say that it's unflatteringly unoriginal,
meaning there's no need for you to pay for a ticket to see it. Trust
me, you've seen it before.
Here's the foundation of the plot: in the year 2008, a deadly infection called the Reaper Virus forced the British government to seal off Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom. (Other than the fact that the Reaper Virus leads to an outbreak of open sores on a person's face, I'm not exactly sure how it works. It's never explained.) By 2035, England is in social and political ruin, and what's worse, the Reaper Virus was not as contained as everyone thought; people in London are showing signs of infection after nearly thirty years of being disease free. Satellite photos reveal that not everyone in quarantined Scotland has died--if anything, that area is swarming with survivors, and according to a voiceover narration, they've been reduced to the behaviors of primal beasts. The most important among the survivors is Dr. Marcus Kane, a scientist who, if found, may be able to finish finding a cure for the Reaper Virus. This leads us to the film's actual plot: military officer Eden
Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is assigned by Prime Minister John Hatcher
(Alexander Siddig) to lead a task force into Scotland and find
Kane. Everything seems straightforward enough, but as you know,
something has to go wrong in order for the story to get interesting.
While searching through a dilapidated hospital, Sinclair and her
squad are attacked and taken prisoner by a band of crazed, murderous,
punk-like cannibals. I know we've seen this before: characters
whose years of isolation led to a new and completely warped sense
of community. Anyway, the apparent leader of this band is Sol
(Craig Conway), a loud, violent man who has no qualms about using
Sinclair as a punching bag. He also doesn't seem to have a problem
with roasting a living man over an open flame. Neither do the
spectators, who cheer as they swarm up to the charred body and
tear off slabs of flesh to eat. |
 |
 |
Using all her military
training, Sinclair breaks free from her holding cell along with
Cally (MyAnna Buring), a young woman claiming to be Kane's daughter.
After a long-winded and bloody escape from Sol's compound, Cally
explains that, although she can point the way to her father, she
can't actually take Sinclair there. This is because, apparently,
Kane is not the man he used to be. The audience discovers this soon
enough; in a remote wooded area, an armored executioner rides in
on a white horse, after which he takes everyone prisoner. We then
finally meet the mysterious Marcus Kane (Malcom McDowell), now the
cold-hearted leader of yet another band of Rage Virus survivors.
Behind the walls of a remote, ancient castle, Kane is no longer
interested in helping anyone--he's perfectly content staying where
he is while keeping everyone else out. The fact that Sinclair crossed
into Scotland is bad enough; now the British government actually
wants him to save lives. This begs the question: Have Sinclair's
actions all been for naught?
This question may not be necessary, especially with scene after scene of bloodshed to keep the audience entertained. "Doomsday" relies so heavily on such scenes that pretty much everything else is secondary. Even a spur-of-the-moment car chase near the end of the film isn't as visually assaulting. It does come close, though; Sol and his posse have caught up with Sinclair at that point, meaning that more than a few people will lose their lives in the most violent of ways. But despite these unnecessary moments, the real problems of this film stem from a lack of originality. Everything I've described has been done before with varying degrees of success, so I'm at a loss to explain why it all had to be done again. And then there's Sinclair, whose back-story is painfully underdeveloped. The film begins in 2008 when she was only a toddler, no older than three: in an act of selflessness, her mother saw her off in a military helicopter along with an address written on an envelope. Not much is explained afterwards, which is bad since we suspect her behavior towards her friend, Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins), is somehow related. I'm not entirely sure why they made an attempt at human drama in the first place. If a post-apocalyptic gore fest is what they wanted to make--and I suspect that they did--then they should have pushed the drama aside, opting instead for even more shots of decapitations and spurting blood. Then again, that probably wouldn't have made "Doomsday" any better. It certainly wouldn't have made it original, which is what I wanted from this film above all else. I also would have appreciated an ending that didn't go for the obvious sting of social commentary; it's been done far too many times, and by now, it's just plain ridiculous. - Chris Pandolfi |
More
Recent Reviews:
Recommendations:
|