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Sunday, September 7, 2008
Movie Review: Doomsday
Repulsive 'Doomsday' reaches new cinematic lows
By John Wirt
jwirt@theadvocate.com
Advocate movie critic
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out of 4 stars.
In a blood-spewing Doomsday, a swiftly-spreading virus causes horrific death in the United Kingdom. There’s no vaccine and people are fleeing from infected areas by the hundreds of thousands.
Although such much-used post-apocalyptic scenarios are weary indeed, an especially good variation on the theme, 28 Days Later, appeared in 2003, followed by its well-regarded 2007 sequel, 28 Weeks Later.
Doomsday, another depiction of a virus-afflicted U.K., is 28 Days Later meets Mad Max. When a terrible virus breaks out in Scotland in 2008, the British government erects a 30-foot wall across the English-Scottish border. The poor Scots are left to die.
The plan works until the year 2035. During a drug raid in London, officers discover a warehouse full of people dying from the dreaded Reaper virus.
The nation’s chief of Domestic Security — played by the dependable Bob Hoskins, slumming in what’s likely the worst movie of his career — assembles an elite team to enter the forbidden zone. The team is charged with finding the Reaper virus cure, which the government believes exists in Scotland.
Hoskins picks the hard-bitten Maj. Eden Sinclair to led the squad. Recalling such earlier femme fatales as Diana Rigg’s cat-suited Emma Peal in The Avengers, Rhona Mitra (Nip/Tuck, The Number 23), plays the cool-under-fire DDS agent.
Following the Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery school of action hero, Mitra’s range of expression is wry and narrow. Anything beyond that would make Doomsday more ridiculous than it is.
Doomsday is gore porn. The film has a particular fetish for beheading and dismemberment. Heads roll, entrails are exposed, bodies burn, human flesh is consumed. The clumsy mayhem takes place in a Mad Max milieu of raving punk rockers and mob rule. Before the final head rolls, the film’s resourceful heroine even battles knights in armor.
Doomsday sinks from low to low. Maybe Doomsday was meant to be as bad as it is, intended to be repulsive trash cinema. If so, the filmmakers achieved their goal and then some.
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