A dirty gitty violent sci-fi movie
Added 10/9/2009
4 of 5 stars for this dirty gritty violent sci-fi movie. So a virus strikes forcing the world to enclose the entire country to prevent spread to the rest of the world. Ultimately a modern day great wall of China is built to secure the quarantine. It is assumed the whole population dies from the virus. Wrong! Many survive (hummm, natural immunity). After many years of stability, the virus spreads to England where the authorites decide they need to capture one of those immune people to create a cure. So, a para-military task force goes beyond the wall. They first go to a large city where they encounter a large collection of people who have gone "primative native" and attack the force. During their escape, they get linked to a different set of people who have gone "knights and castles".
This movie is very dirty and gritty. The most graphic violence that I've seen since some of those movies in the 70's. Plenty of blood, guts, bullets, body parts and dead people. Good action, good special effects, interesting plot. Worth watching, but, be warned, it is graphic!
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Unashamed B-movie mayhem
Added 10/2/2009
It's all been seen before, and this movie won't be the one to remember when you're discussing exploitation movies down the pub... but for all that, it does its job efficiently enough and does what it sets out to.
For the most part, what it is setting out to do seems to be to homage other movies. It's set in a future world where an incurable disease called the Reaper virus (cos it's deadly, geddit..?) has led to a Scotland completely sealed off from land, air or sea to allow the population to die without infecting anyone else. However, 25 years after the virus appeared and was contained, it has resurfaced, and a team must re-enter Scotland, to investigate recent indications of survivors, which could mean a cure is possible. The build up and plot exposition are effective, evoking some of the ideas from 28 Days Later, and the scene where the armoured cars enter Glasgow rips off the scene in Aliens with armoured car carrying the marines to the centre of the aliens nest, down to the smallest details. From Aliens, the director moves on to a Scottish variation on Mad Max's Thunderdome, as we meet the punkish degenerate subculture which has taken over the city. Finally the movie brings all the pieces together in a car chase which plays like a mixture of Bond and Mad Max via Escape from New York to a not-quite-satisfying-enough conclusion.
Rhona Mitra plays the team leader, Major Skinner, dressed in unfeasibly tight clothes to accentuate her figure for most of the movie. She does the job, but fails to really set the screen alight with the necessary charisma to make the B-movie nonsense memorable. Supporting roles are filled out with a few British cinema stalwarts - Sean Pertwee, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell and Alexander Siddig all perfom just to the level required and not much more. It's action packed, bloody and gruesome and often gratuitous, but never goes quite over the top enough to be too offensive. That is perhaps an indication of the director's intention to make a tongue in cheek apocalyptic thriller that does not take itself too seriously - and in that he has succeeded. But in using a script riddled with plot holes and unlikely conveniences, he has failed to make something unmissable - or even truly memorable.
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Derivative Action from the Driector of "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent"
Added 9/21/2009
Though it includes lots of shoot-outs, gores and chopped-off limbs and heads, Neil Marshall's newest film "Doomsday" comes off rather disappointing. The film is from the director who made two impressive films, "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent." Some say they are overrated, but still Neil Marshall managed to show originality and creativity in his previous works. As far as the budget goes, his latest effort has become much bigger and louder; however, "Doomsday" looks lackluster and, more importantly, derivative.
The outbreak of a deadly plague in Glasgow, with the horror of the pandemic, results in the quarantine of Scotland. No one is allowed to leave the country and the people inside the border are left abandoned. Years later, in 2035, because of another outbreak of the same disease in London, a group of soldiers led by Maj. Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is immediately sent to Scotland, in order to find a cure.
Usually any action or horror films need suspension of disbelief, but "Doomsday" asks for it so many times. You will see the angry mob gets killed by the soldiers, but one little girl is allowed to board a chopper. Eventually all logic is abandoned in favor of reasonable, if not remarkable action and set-pieces, which can be improved with better editing and choreography.
This is the world of Mad Max and Snake Plissken. Or one that has copied them. Clearly Neil Marshall loves classic action flicks made in 70-80s - soldiers' names include "Miller" and "Carpenter." You may add to them "Hill," "Cameron" and "Boyle" perhaps. Don't get me wrong. Paying homage is not a bad thing. It is just that it doesn't necessarily mean you can dispense with a decent script and your own ideas. If your new idea is the lengthy "BBQ" stage with cancan music, you need to watch these classic films again. They may be violent, but certainly they are not boring.
"Doomsday" has so many things - car chases, street combats, one-on-one fights, tortures, gores, decapitations and even deliberate dumbness. These factors can be fun only if they are done with decent stories. The film constantly changes its rules as it moves on from one chapter to another whimsically, and then we realize that like Tarantino's self-indulgent "Death Proof," the director is actually doing what other directors did. And they did better.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Post-Nuke Punk Mash-Up
Added 9/10/2009
If you can imagine a film that combines Mad Max 2 & 3, Escape from New York and Underworld, that's pretty darn close to Neil Marshall's Doomsday. It's nowhere near the classic status as the Mad Max films or Escape from New York but it's just as entertaining, if not moreso! Doomsday has it all, there hasn't been a post-apocalyptic pie this good since the 80s, Marshall holds nothing back! There's cannibalism, post-nuke punkers and a medieval society lead by cult icon, Malcolm McDowell!
Was Doomsday original? Not at all, we've seen the whole "Send somebody into a forbidden city in search of..." plot a million times before but entertainment is entertainment no matter how cliché it is. This had style, violence, gore and sex appeal; I was actually disappointed to see it end. The acting was great, the fight choreography solid and the production design fantastic but the thing that really made this fun, for me, was how successful Marshall was in transporting me back to the days of American & Italian post-nuke cinema!
Doomsday is a loving homage to post-nuke cinema of the past and, without a doubt, a party flick! It doesn't pretend to be something it isn't, there's no pretension here, it's good, clean action! I would have given it four stars but the replay value isn't as high as I'd hoped it would be.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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AS THE POLITE HOUSE GUEST SAID ABOUT HIS BOILED EGG . . .
Added 8/28/2009
ONCE UPON A TIME a man was visiting friends who served him breakfast with a boiled egg that was just beginning to spoil. Not wanting to offend anyone, he added extra pepper and ate it all. When his hostess asked how his egg was, he truthfully replied, "Parts of it were excellent."
The same can be said for this film.
As our own civilization comes closer and closer to crumbling in a dozen different ways, dystopian science fiction flourishes both in print and in films. DOOMSDAY is one of the handsomer and more thought-provoking entries in recent years. It has a skillful cast, excellent production values, and a gripping central story. (Bob Hoskins, Alexander Siddig, and Malcolm McDowell are the main supports; Rhona Mitra is the main star.)
Yes, we older folks have seen much of it elsewhere, especially in huge chunks of the MAD MAX/ROAD WARRIOR films (including DOOMSDAY's "remake" of the David-vs.-Goliath battle where "two go in--one comes out")--but perhaps each generation needs to have the vital wake-up calls remade just for them.
And yet, while we watch any film or read any story, a part of our mind often is doing a quality assessment of it--including how plausible its various characters and scenes and bits of dialogue are AND how consistently these unfold. Sad to say, this is where DOOMSDAY stumbles for me. After a fine set-up of a plague in Scotland, the cruel way a quarantine is established, and a later outbreak of the same plague in London, the heroine (played in wonderful kickass fashion by Rhona Mitra) is sent into Scotland to try to find a cure. BAM! We run into Major Plot Hole #1: Although it is made clear that for many years there has been absolutely no evidence of any human beings surviving in Scotland, not only are there hundreds of them in Glasgow, the first city investigated, but they are using electrical power to light up the city at night! (How did the military planes of the UK miss this little detail? Duh?)
Getting into a dangerous place, of course, is but half the problem in all such films--Ms. Mitra has to do some Kurt Russell magic (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, 1981) in order to complete her mission. BAM! BAM! BAM! Oops. More Major Plot Holes. Here are just a few along the way: How easy is it to open a giant blast-proof door in an old army tunnel? How likely is it that a powerful, pristine civilian car is waiting behind it?? How likely is it that--after 20 years--its gasoline is still good and its battery is still charged??? And what about the hundreds of cannibals from Glasgow? How did THEY just happen to locate the heroine on her return journey? And how likely is it that even a Batmobile could crash THROUGH a bus stretched across the highway--without suffering even one scratch????
Well, for the sake of fantasy fun, often a major component of such films, we all are used to suspending our disbelief, and in this case the payoff of this film is worth it: most of us nowadays are very disgusted with the lies told by politicians in our own city, county, state, and country, and the final scenes of DOOMSDAY (without away giving any details) treat the audience to some Satisfying Poetic Justice in this area.
Oh, just in case you wanted to watch this film with your grandmother, the unrated version has partial nudity for about 30 seconds (a minor female character in a bathtub).
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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A dirty gitty violent sci-fi movie
Added 10/9/2009
4 of 5 stars for this dirty gritty violent sci-fi movie. So a virus strikes forcing the world to enclose the entire country to prevent spread to the rest of the world. Ultimately a modern day great wall of China is built to secure the quarantine. It is assumed the whole population dies from the virus. Wrong! Many survive (hummm, natural immunity). After many years of stability, the virus spreads to England where the authorites decide they need to capture one of those immune people to create a cure. So, a para-military task force goes beyond the wall. They first go to a large city where they encounter a large collection of people who have gone "primative native" and attack the force. During their escape, they get linked to a different set of people who have gone "knights and castles".
This movie is very dirty and gritty. The most graphic violence that I've seen since some of those movies in the 70's. Plenty of blood, guts, bullets, body parts and dead people. Good action, good special effects, interesting plot. Worth watching, but, be warned, it is graphic!
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
Unashamed B-movie mayhem
Added 10/2/2009
It's all been seen before, and this movie won't be the one to remember when you're discussing exploitation movies down the pub... but for all that, it does its job efficiently enough and does what it sets out to.
For the most part, what it is setting out to do seems to be to homage other movies. It's set in a future world where an incurable disease called the Reaper virus (cos it's deadly, geddit..?) has led to a Scotland completely sealed off from land, air or sea to allow the population to die without infecting anyone else. However, 25 years after the virus appeared and was contained, it has resurfaced, and a team must re-enter Scotland, to investigate recent indications of survivors, which could mean a cure is possible. The build up and plot exposition are effective, evoking some of the ideas from 28 Days Later, and the scene where the armoured cars enter Glasgow rips off the scene in Aliens with armoured car carrying the marines to the centre of the aliens nest, down to the smallest details. From Aliens, the director moves on to a Scottish variation on Mad Max's Thunderdome, as we meet the punkish degenerate subculture which has taken over the city. Finally the movie brings all the pieces together in a car chase which plays like a mixture of Bond and Mad Max via Escape from New York to a not-quite-satisfying-enough conclusion.
Rhona Mitra plays the team leader, Major Skinner, dressed in unfeasibly tight clothes to accentuate her figure for most of the movie. She does the job, but fails to really set the screen alight with the necessary charisma to make the B-movie nonsense memorable. Supporting roles are filled out with a few British cinema stalwarts - Sean Pertwee, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell and Alexander Siddig all perfom just to the level required and not much more. It's action packed, bloody and gruesome and often gratuitous, but never goes quite over the top enough to be too offensive. That is perhaps an indication of the director's intention to make a tongue in cheek apocalyptic thriller that does not take itself too seriously - and in that he has succeeded. But in using a script riddled with plot holes and unlikely conveniences, he has failed to make something unmissable - or even truly memorable.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Derivative Action from the Driector of "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent"
Added 9/21/2009
Though it includes lots of shoot-outs, gores and chopped-off limbs and heads, Neil Marshall's newest film "Doomsday" comes off rather disappointing. The film is from the director who made two impressive films, "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent." Some say they are overrated, but still Neil Marshall managed to show originality and creativity in his previous works. As far as the budget goes, his latest effort has become much bigger and louder; however, "Doomsday" looks lackluster and, more importantly, derivative.
The outbreak of a deadly plague in Glasgow, with the horror of the pandemic, results in the quarantine of Scotland. No one is allowed to leave the country and the people inside the border are left abandoned. Years later, in 2035, because of another outbreak of the same disease in London, a group of soldiers led by Maj. Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) is immediately sent to Scotland, in order to find a cure.
Usually any action or horror films need suspension of disbelief, but "Doomsday" asks for it so many times. You will see the angry mob gets killed by the soldiers, but one little girl is allowed to board a chopper. Eventually all logic is abandoned in favor of reasonable, if not remarkable action and set-pieces, which can be improved with better editing and choreography.
This is the world of Mad Max and Snake Plissken. Or one that has copied them. Clearly Neil Marshall loves classic action flicks made in 70-80s - soldiers' names include "Miller" and "Carpenter." You may add to them "Hill," "Cameron" and "Boyle" perhaps. Don't get me wrong. Paying homage is not a bad thing. It is just that it doesn't necessarily mean you can dispense with a decent script and your own ideas. If your new idea is the lengthy "BBQ" stage with cancan music, you need to watch these classic films again. They may be violent, but certainly they are not boring.
"Doomsday" has so many things - car chases, street combats, one-on-one fights, tortures, gores, decapitations and even deliberate dumbness. These factors can be fun only if they are done with decent stories. The film constantly changes its rules as it moves on from one chapter to another whimsically, and then we realize that like Tarantino's self-indulgent "Death Proof," the director is actually doing what other directors did. And they did better.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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