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based on videogames. You have to wonder why they
keep making them. For every successful attempt
("Tombraider"
being the best example), there are a dozen
carcasses left behind to warn those who would dare
follow in their footsteps. Andrzej Bartkowiak's
"Doom" is based on an old PC game from
the early '90s that proved popular enough to spawn
numerous sequels, expansion packs, death matches,
and mods (don't worry if you don't know what any
of these things are, it just means you're not a PC
gaming geek), and more recently, led to the
creation of the "Quake" series of games.
How exactly do the original "Doom" games
translate into a movie? Not very well, as there's
nothing cinematic or story-driven about those
games in the first place. To wit: you have a gun,
you walk around, and you kill spawning demons. The
end.
And so they made a movie out
of Doom anyway. Is it any good? Not particularly.
Former cinematographer turned director Andrzej
Bartkowiak ("Romeo
Must Die") tries to hide most of the film
in darkness, but curiously fails to generate any
real tension. The movie concerns a squad of
Marines sent to investigate the disappearance of
scientists on a Mars research station. They
discover that indigenous creatures have infected
the scientists and turned them into monsters bent
on -- well, something. This leads to a lot of
scenes of gung-ho Marines, strapped with giant
guns stalking about dark corridors, dark rooms,
and dark basements. And I do mean a lot
of these scenes. It's all very dark, and it's
anybody's guess what's happening in any given
scene.
The Marines themselves are a
rag tag bunch, certainly not made of the sturdy
stuff you'd entrust with such a vital mission. As
per S.O.P., one of the Marines is a religious
fanatic into self-mortification; another is an
easily scared rookie named The Kid; there's a
combative pervert into "she-boys"; and
of course, the usual sprinkling of minority faces
to keep the film PC. With the exception of the
Sarge (The Rock) and Reaper (Karl Urban), you
wouldn't want these guys guarding a hen house,
much less going on important rescue missions on
another planet. The attempt at giving the Marines
edgy personalities was probably the contribution
of screenwriter Wesley Strick, who gained fame
writing a psychopath Robert De Niro in "
Cape
Fear
". Here, the attributed "edginess"
just comes across as silly.
The film's actual hero
(notice I did not say star) is New Zealander Karl
Urban (last seen battling Vin Diesel in "The
Chronicles of Riddick"), playing Marine
John Grimm, whose code name is Reaper.
("Grimm Reaper", get it?) John's twin
sister, Samantha (Rosamund Pike, last seen
battling James Bond in "Die
Another Day") is a scientist at the Mars
research station, and the two haven't seen each
other in 10 years. John doesn't like going back to
Mars, especially since his parents, both
researchers like sis, were killed during a dig
there many years back. Now back together again,
the siblings have some catching up to do, but all
that's interrupted by monsters and quickly dying
Marines. Don't you hate it when that happens?
Unquestionably poorly
conceived and scripted, "Doom" does have
a couple of nifty moments that makes it just a
little bit worthwhile. There's a long sequence
toward the end where Bartkowiak gives the audience
a first-person perspective of combat as Reaper
marches through the facility, encountering and
killing monsters as he go. Mainstream movie
reviewers were dumbfounded by this move, and the
general consensus deemed it pointless. In fact,
Yes, it is quite pointless, and only a veteran of
First Person Shooters could possibly appreciate
this sequence, which I did. The other good idea is
the ark, the means of instantaneous teleportation
from Earth to Mars, which unfortunately is more of
a plot device than anything relevant to the story
at hand.
Fans of the games won't be
completely satisfied with "Doom" the
movie, since although Bartkowiak and company do
include a lot of game elements in the film, one
can't help but notice that a lot of the monsters
that made the games so memorable aren't even
present. While the Imps are well represented, the
complete absence of giant floating monster heads
that spit out balls of fire is a bit
disappointing. The film's "R" rating
probably cost "Doom" a lot of teen
business, but it works wonders for the gore. The
film is covered end to end in gruesome splatter
and a seemingly unlimited supply of gushing blood.
Gorehounds will certainly appreciate
"Doom", while queasy moviegoers might
think it exploitative.
Approached from the
right perspective, "Doom" is not an
especially bad movie. In fact, it's quite
entertaining when it stops wallowing in darkness
long enough to deliver fights between Marines and
monsters. The characters are perhaps too edgy,
leading to questionable personalities among what
are supposed to be rough and tumble, but highly
professional Marines. Also, a major character has
a complete personality transplant in the Third
Act, setting the stage for a mano-a-mano fight
with Reaper. And yes, I'll even grant you that
stars Karl Urban and the lovely Rosamund Pike
probably tries too hard to get their American
accents right (why bother in the first place?) at
the expense of any chemistry between them. Still,
it's mindless splatter with a big budget, and
that's not something you encounter often from
Hollywood
.
By the way, a little word of
advice to screenwriters Dave Callaham and Wesley
Strick: Marines, even futuristic ones, would
never, ever
refer to themselves and their fellow Marines as
"soldiers".
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