There is nothing quite like being bowled over by a film. Afterwards you walk out, blinking and dazed into the bright sunlight and for the next couple of days your memory is high jacked by images from what you have seen. Unfortunately, there is nothing quite as disappointing as expecting to be bowled over only to feel slightly short-changed. Even when a film is as much fun as Doomsday this can be a big let down.
Right from the start director Neil Marshall has been clear in his intentions to make a film that rolled the Mad Max Trilogy, Escape From New York and numerous other 80’s classics up in a Union Jack and, to some extent that is what he has done. Doomsday starts of with the idea that a lethal virus was contained by rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall and effectively killing Scotland. Move forwards thirty-ish years and a new strain has appeared in London, so the government (boo hiss etc) sends a crack squad of soldiers into Scotland to find a possible cure… of course they also find a Wild Boys-esque vision of social breakdown.
There is a heck of a lot to like here as Marshall does not pull any punches in the imagination or action stakes. There are shoot outs, car chases, pit-fights, knights, machines guns, cannibalism, and about five tonnes of generally anti-social behaviour. The good guys are fun and the bad guys are mental with a sprinkling of great scenery chewing from the mighty Malcolm McDowell. In fact one slight problem is that there is almost too much for one film and you feel slightly unsatisfied with the time spent within this world.
Where the film really feels flat is in the absence of the kind of cynicism that prevaled in the 80’s cinema that is being recreated. Rhona Mitra’s Eden Sinclair might be a hard edged maverick (and you would have to be with that name) but she is definitely no Snake Plissken or ‘Mad’ Max Rockatansky. Whilst it is great to see a female lead in a film such as this, I can’t help but feel that an actor like Thomas Jane would have been more able to provide the iconic centre that this film is crying out for.
…but despite this gap Doomsday is real good fun. It is big and brash and chaotic, and it has a real sense of it’s own ludicrousness which, sometimes, is exactly what the doctor ordered.
7/10
