We hadn't gotten together in a few weeks, so on Saturday I drove over to Malaya's condo and picked her up for some social activities. We got lunch (at a Vietnamese place we picked at random), scavenged from a used book store that was (sadly) going out of business and selling everything at 75% off, and then headed to the movies for some mindless action fun. Our drug of choice?
Doomsday, a new low-budget gore-fest shot in South Africa, set in Ireland, and starring no one you've ever heard of, aside from Bob Hoskins doing a hard-boiled police chief character who might as well have been cut and pasted out of every other action movie ever made.
It's not a good movie, but it's fun for action/horror movie fans who don't mind (or who actually enjoy) absurd amounts of gore and needless violence. You know who you are. Set your expectations appropriately, and you'll have a good time with this one. To the scores:
Doomsday, 2008
Script/Story: 3
Acting/Casting: 3
Action: 8
Eye Candy: 5
Fun Factor: 7
Replayability: 6
Overall: 5.5
I had the hardest time figuring the scores for this film I almost wanted to rate it like I did the
first few Harry Potter novels, with different scores for adults and children. In the case of
Doomsday, the scores would be for horror/action movie fans vs. real people, but I decided against that since there's no way anyone but horror/action movie fans would get through the first 15 minutes of this picture, much less the whole thing. Several people walked out of the very uncrowded early Saturday afternoon screening Malaya and me attended; a couple beside us during the sadistic torture/human BBQ/mob cannibalism scene at about the 30 minute mark. Yes, you read that right.
It's a potentially very offensive film, but neither of us was offended because it was all so ridiculous and outrageous. The tone of the film was light and silly, even while the violence was never less than grotesque. In an odd way, the violence itself contributes to that, by always going overboard. Every human who dies in the film explodes like a swollen sack of cranberry sauce, whether they're shot with bullets or arrows, stabbed, run over, impaled, beheaded, hit with a fire axe, etc. The same bloody mess rules apply to animals as well, including cows and a rabbit, so at least the film is consistent.
Every fight scene includes at least one horribly maiming injury, and usually ends with a slow motion beheading and/or de-limbing. Every human in the film is happy to murder, repeatedly, given any opportunity to do so. All human leaders in the film are genocidal maniacs, clinging to power by any means available to them and happily sacrificing many/most/all of their followers to further their own ends. You get the picture.
All that said, it's not a grim or dark film, since it's just so stupid and so wacky that it's impossible to take it seriously. The constant
homages to other films help with that, since they're so blatant and obvious that you get some of the mood of those action classics inserted into this one, like fun via a
solid flavor injector. Yes this film is frequently almost identical to
The Road Warrior,
Escape from New York, and all the recent zombie movies, where the zombies run fast and hit hard, but since those were fun movies, and this one is ripping off their theme and look, but not actually clumsily recreating their scenes (which was something that bothered me about
AvP2), it's not an unpleasant process.
It was better than the trailer suggested, and the other films it appears to borrow from weren't as obvious in the full film, but
The Road Warrior comparisons more than made up for it, since at least half this movie was essentially set in the same world as that Mel Gibson classic, including the character types, fashions, world economy, and political themes. Of course it lacked the subtleties, varied sub-characters, or the believable characterization of the Mad Max films, but that's to be expected these days. All the characters in
Doomsday are pretty clearly doing what they're doing since it's required of them by the plot. No one feels like a real person, or an individual. There's the crazy, sadistic bad guy, his hot and psycho girlfriend, countless anonymous and incompetent guards, the good guy's loyal, competent, but unimaginative second in command, the timid follower who might find his guts eventually, the flaccid damsel in distress, etc.
I don't include the poor man's
Kate Beckinsale female
hero lead in this listing, since I don't think she had enough of a character to have a character type. She was whatever the movie required her to be at the time; brave and perfectly competent, an indestructible killer, sensitive and remorseful over lost comrades (but only when there was time for it, and she could always snap instantly back into single-minded combat mode), honest and caring, deceptive and manipulative, etc. She's basically the cipher-like hero of a video game RPG, capable in all situations and possessed of no individual traits or behaviors that would compromise her doing anything, at any time, to save the day. Or that make her memorable or interesting.
And yes, I'm vastly overanalyzing a movie that's designed to be impervious to analysis, or at least to render analysis irrelevant. There is a plot and a sense of narrative, but it's non-essential, and irrelevant. That there's a plot might actually be a bad thing, since the plot is so dumb and improbable, and contradicts itself in so many ways, that it's actively distracting when it intrudes. Fortunately, it's not difficult to forget, or just go along with since viewers know this sort of film has to have a ticking clock of some type, to motivate the leads to continually take the insane risks they take in order to keep the action going. So of course 90% of the action scenes are silly and pointless, especially the last half hour of Mad Max-honoring car chase absurdity (that is so patently taking place
nowhere near Ireland that I imagine natives of that country will spend most of it laughing out loud), but since you bought your ticket wanting action scenes and mayhem, are you going to complain? No. Well, not too loudly, anyway.
Doomsday is an awful, violent, disgusting movie, but that's all intentional, and if you go in expecting a cheesy, bloody action movie, you'll probably have a pretty good time. Malaya and me did, at least.
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