Doomsday (2008)

Wow! Such a good movie.

How sad is this?

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Lets start with the good parts. I liked the overall visuals and sets and seemingly this was quite a big budget film minus the actual star actors which were missing. Especially the Mad Max style gang scenes were believable and quite intense. The main baddie could also act (unlike the main heroine). Some of the scenes were pretty cool like the first attack scene from the raiders and there was a sense of danger in it. Overall the acting was hit and miss. Needless to say that the main character was a huge miscast. I haven't seen this wooden and uncharismatic acting since, forever. Malcolm McDowell, a great actor, was mentioned in the initial credits, I waited him, and he had like 5 minutes of screen time. Figures. Mostly it was cringe-worthy performances and cliched dialogue from b-grade actors. The story and screenplay was crazy jumping from futuristic "Aliens" style of military stuff towards a zombie flick, and then to Mad Max, and eventually to some medieval castle with knights and all. A lot of it made no sense. I guess they just wanted to show cool scenery and costumes to audience.Action scenes went on and quickly it was made clear that the main lady could take any kind of damage and pretty much kill anybody and everybody. That, and the fact that she was annoying and arrogant bitch made this film lose most of the stars from my eyes. It is very typical in these times to set a woman to be the "bring best man you can find" as it was said in the film. Forget the physics and realities, this skinny woman can take down any man twice at her size, even unarmed against steel armor-plated warrior. No problem. Can take full force punches to stomach without any injury. Also she can just run away from motorbike raiders coming right at her. Surely, if this is a superhero film, I'd have no problem with that or anything else happened in the movie. But if you lose believability, you lose everything. Mostly that was because of lazy scripting and when all the suspense and danger disappears, you get numb and bored.As said, there were some cool scenes in this film but they were quickly forgotten by crazy out of place bits. Most definitely, the most ridiculous scene was at the end when the Bentley pierced straight through a bus without even a dent in its bumpers. I guess the bus was made out of paper or something. Just like all the bad guys.Final verdict: 2/10 with the lead actress, 6/10 with Jason Statham.

Doomsday as others have remarked is a cross of many SF classics, Mad Max, Aliens and Escape from New York to name just 3 The plot sees Scotland cut off from the rest of the world due to a killer virus. However when the same virus rears it's head in London a team of special forces ops and medics are sent into Glasgow when signs of life may mean that there is a cure. What they find is a savage society where canibalism is the norm. Doomsday is filled with action set pieces of the highest order plus a cast that includes Bob Hoskins and Malcolm MacDowall. This is a film that gives your money's worth.

I don't typically like to leave wholly negative reviews but what the crap this movie was all kinds of terrible. The writing was seriously sub-par which dragged the already meh story down a few hundred notches, the acting varied from just okay to awful, and the idea itself was bad.First it seems like it's going to be an epidemic movie to the tune of 28 Days Later, or maybe the Resident Evil franchise. Whatever the plague is, it's fast and ugly. We fast forward in time somewhat while listening to an overly dramatic and irritating voice-over into a futuristic dystopia. So that's our movie right? WRONG! Suddenly we dive into a coke-induced Mad Max apocalypse, where people have been cut off for 30 years from all contact with the outside world yet still manage to gather hairstyling supplies so they can gel and dye their enormous mohawks. Did I mention they eat people? Because they mention they eat people, about half a hundred times. We get it, these Road Warrior rejects are cannibals. We didn't need the several minutes of them cooking and eating one of the soldiers to know that. So these are our antagonists. But wait no! Our headstrong heroine escapes the band of multicolored man-eaters only to find a renaissance fair has established itself in a nearby castle, run by one of the most obviously evil doctors I've ever seen and his scowling henchman. They host a Gladiator style fight with the protagonist and a really bulky armored dude, which of course she wins because she's the protagonist and in the process of escaping one of her fellow soldiers(whom the directing seems to think is her love interest by the way they shoot the scenes) gets pumped full of arrows thanks to this universe's version of the Sheriff of Nottingham or whatever he's supposed to be. So our knock-off Alice avenges him and-oh wait no she doesn't. They just leave. They don't bother to take out the King Arthur wannabe or anything.Now it's the return of the punk rock people-eaters, as they somehow manage to gather together the prop cars that were abandoned Beyond Thunderdome and there's a car chase with far too many explosions and not enough reason why or how they're here.Finally the REAL VILLAIN is revealed! Oh no the obviously evil guy with the dark sunglasses and government connections who has been dropping hints the whole movie about how he orchestrated the quarantine breech was behind it all? You don't say. But our girl records him with her prosthetic eye-cam(which was the only part of the movie I liked) and thus the day is saved! Our hero can find her mom! Or not, maybe she'll find a decapitated head and get herself elected queen of the cannibals. THE END.Everything that is good about this movie is cribbed from better movies. There's a fine line between paying homage and ripping things off and Doomsday staggers drunkenly all over the line before sliding over it like it's home plate. Neil Marshall what happened man? I liked Dog Soldiers. The Descent was fine for the first half of the movie. Why is spew out this garbage? Bob Hoskins is wasted in his small role as Eden's mentor and Alexander Siddig is even more wasted as a character whose sole purpose seems to be to kill himself so a suicide can be carefully shot. Why?Don't watch this movie. Watch Road Warrior instead. Watch Gladiator instead. Watch anything else but this movie.

It's "Escape From New York" meets "The Road Warrior" by way of "28 Days Later" in "Doomsday". Director Neil Marshall's ("The Descent") post-apocalyptic homage to the above mentioned (and more) plays it pretty fast and loose with plot and logic, never once slowing down for character-building as it jumps from one wild set piece to another. It's a film that seemingly has no attention span, never feels terribly cohesive, and yet never fails to entertain.It's the year 2035 and a virus has all but decimated Scotland. In an attempt to contain and control the virus, the government builds a wall separating the ravaged country from the rest of Britain. Presumably, they made Scotland's ravaged population pay for the wall themselves. Enter hardened officer Eden Sinclair, as played by Rhona Mitra. Part Sarah Connor, part Snake Plissken, Sinclair (and her faceless team) is tasked with re-entering the ravaged region to hunt down a possible cure for the virus. Along the way, she matches wits with the locals who include but are not limited to a group of "Mad Max" rejects and a game Malcolm McDowell (who also provides the film's lengthy expository narration). Butts are kicked and blood is shed, to say the least.Marshall knows what kind of film he is making and he also knows you've seen this film a hundred times before. Appropriately, he takes glee in his film's excess, going full Paul Verhoeven at times in embracing over-the-top gore and laugh-out-loud ultra-violence. This is a film made for the genre fan whose bread is buttered by '80s action, sci- fi and horror. It's pure homage of the highest order; a grindhouse- esque onslaught of tackiness and titillating tension. "Doomsday" never quite rises above its source material, and that's OK. As far as mindless, late-night entertainment goes, few modern films get the formula down as well as this glorious cheesefest does.