Tags: compare doomsday madmax
03/15/08
Whatever the future holds for us, any loss of confidence in societal institutions will effect a resurgence of punk music. Or, at least, punk-style flourishes like piercings, tattoos, and spiky hair. And that's just one of the brain-dead sci-fi stereotypes in Doomsday.
Doomsday is the second best apocalypse-themed movie in theaters this week behind Horton Hears a Who and probably worse than the alcohol inspired Cyberpunk LARP you filmed with your friends. In Doomsday, a virus breaks out in Scotland, forcing the government to fence it off from society (Frankly, not a moment too soon: I'd isolate those warm-beer-chugging, burring, skirt-wearing Philistines today.). When the virus re-surfaces in England, the government sends a crack team led by Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), a Scottish plague survivor with a hugely significant name, to retrieve the cure they believe exists because three-year-old satellite photos prove that people still survive. Yes, it takes three years.
Even though I wasn't quite comfortable with sending just eight people into a vast, unknown wasteland for such a critical mission (Why not send a thousand? Why go in Strykers instead of helicopters? Why...ahh!), I expected a quick operation. I was shocked, shocked! when things go awry. The elite team runs into a group of survivors called the "Marauders," the aforementioned punk rockers. Once free of them, Eden finds another survivor band, Renaissance faire geeks led by Kane (Malcolm McDowell).
The story is a mess with loose ends flagellating viewer sensibilities like a Marauder S and M whip. It would have been cool if the one of the survivor groups were good and the other bad and Eden helped one. Instead, she just bounces from one to the other and then back again (To be fair, the movie hints that she'll make a difference. I wish I would have seen that movie.). I'm guessing that the punk rock Marauders leader, Sol, is just nuts (horribly overplayed by Craig Conway), but what's Kane's motivation? He's a scientist: He should know that one can extract a cure with immune blood or DNA.
Other story issues:
Why doesn't the government want the cure- just so the movie can have some sort of conspiratorial intrigue? Well, the resultant corrupt-government subplot is too banal to describe.
Eden has a robotic eye of sorts, which she, to the audience's great discomfort, uses to look around corners and such. First, it makes absolutely no sense: Why not have another device in her pocket, say, and keep the eye in her head? Second, the eye plays no significance in the main part of the movie. James Bond uses everything he's given at the beginning!
The rubber-fetish guy is a strait rip-off of “the gimp” from Pulp Fiction.
The fights are predictable and boring, except for one semi-exciting subway chase scene (The Marauders couldn't follow the train tracks to the Ren lair? Dumb.).
And, so it goes- a simple movie that trips upon any sort of complication.
The dialog is action, tough-guy (gal) one liners.
What's worse is the gratuitous violence. O.K., people of a certain entertainment threshold like decapitations and brain splatters, but exploding bunny rabbits? Have Scots no shame?
Message/ Politics:
Euro-nihilism, mostly. I very much doubt that the Scots, an admittedly uncivilized population group, would degenerate to such an extent. I'd consider it more likely that Scots would turn to religion, not Frankie Goes to Hollywood for civilization guidance. Precedence? Europe did suffer under numerous wars and plagues without reverting to barbarism.
Pulp Fiction (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
XML Feeds
