Review contains foul, awesome language. You've been warned.
Doomsday kicks fuckin' ass. For 105 minutes, it whipped me so fuckin' hard, I nearly fell out of my chair. I pumped my fist in victory at least three times: two of those in the same scene.
The film made less than 5 million bucks opening weekend, and currently has a meager 35 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics liken it to "a videogame" (what they're asserting about that medium, I have no idea). They also compare it to the works of Dr. Boll and Paul W. S. Anderson. They by and large "Cannot believe it's from the maker of the Descent," and list various violent acts in the film as if their very presence in a motion picture is an offense.
They're so wrong. So hopelessly, psychotically wrong.
The story is structured like a fusion of Escape From New York and 28 Days Later, but there's no zombies. The reason a familiar story line (and similarly designed action sequences to the Resident Evil flicks) don't feel like rip-offs is that Neil Marshall is an amazing fucking director. Every scene and set is flawlessly designed, with huge scope, miraculous lighting design and superb camerawork. The action scenes border on total chaos, but even when you lose track of what exactly is going on, it demands your attention. It craves audience immersion and it rewards those who provide it handsomely with money shots a-plenty.
Oh yeah, it's bloody. Like, "Would be banned from release 15 years ago," bloody. Faces blown off, heads impaled, and whole bodies being run over and/or exploding into skeletons are all shown with vivid fucking beauty. If Doomsday were going the horror route, this kinda shit would be totally disgusting, but since it's all in a lighter vein, every time something horrible happens to someone it gets an old school "Whoop!" from the audience. It's visceral, awesome shit that's more creative in design than most anything else being put out today. I screamed out "YES!" once or twice and didn't fucking care what people thought.
All right, maybe the dialogue crosses into bullcrap territory, but in a 105 minute flick that has 85 minutes of nonstop asskickery, take the little breaks for chatter as throwaway. There's a story - a cool story - but when there are THREE action scenes longer than ten or fifteen minutes in a movie, do honestly care? If you do, don't get your knickers in a twist, cause the dialogue doesn't drag it down much anyway.
I talked about the production design a bit ago, but it's gotta be reiterated how beautiful this shit is: lights go on and you see more of a long hallway - the scene is awesome. All the sets are littered with shit you'd expect to find and all the dust and steam and dirt and shit make chases and fight scenes seem so much more epic than they would otherwise. Everything has a near Ridley Scott level of texture. You can caress the walls and skin with your eyes and experience flesh tearing as if it were your own.
Yeah. it could be grouped in with Boll/Anderson dreck, but if so, 28 Weeks Later could be, too, and if you actually saw the flick, you should know that's not true. You could say a lot of movies about a team of badasses trying to do something to save the world fall into the same category, but that won't make it so.
Doomsday will kick your ass. It'll pick your ass up, kick it again and tear it off with its bare hands. It'll fry it up at at three hundred degrees and serve it to you in a newspaper with some fries and vinegar.
Doomsday: The best ass and chips you'll ever eat.
"Doomsday" opens March 14, 2008 and is rated R. Action, Sci-Fi. Written and directed by Neil Marshall. Starring Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Alexander Siddig, Sean Pertwee, Adrian Lester.
