Thursday, July 31, 2008

Doomsday - DVD Review

DOOMSDAY (**) - Starring Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Malcolm McDowell, Adrian Lester, David O'Hara and Alexander Siddig.
Written & directed by Neil Marshall.

Have you seen Mad Max or Escape from New York? Then you don't need to see this. Those were better versions of this. Sure, those movies might be dated now, but this movie already is. I guess you could say it's Mad Maxine, as our protagonist is a gun-toting, butt-kicking chick, complete with a Plissken-esque eyepatch.

A plague has hit Scotland, and in amazingly quick, organized fashion, England walls it off, creates a no-fly zone, and just lets the place rot for twenty years. The rest of the world has forgotten about Scotland, believing everyone in there is dead and the virus is contained. But when new outbreaks of the virus hit London, the government looks back to Scotland. It seems many people survived the plague, so they send in a task force to find the cure and get out.

Leave Scotland alone for twenty years, and most of the people have turned into this punk-rock, high-mohawk, apocalyptic wasteland straight of the Road Warrior handbook. Or have they? The movie gets really bizarre when the task-force finds a band of people living in an old castle, complete with dressing in medieval garb and engaging in knight games. Through it all Rhona Mitra, who's a cross between Kate Beckinsale from Underworld and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) from Lost, doesn't bat her one good eye as she breaks arms, bashes heads, and fights her way to find the cure.

Bob Hoskins used to get better material than this, but I guess it's all been downhill since the Super Mario Bros Movie.

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