| Product: |
Doom (Extended Edition, DVD) |
| Date: |
08/12/06 (152 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: The section based on the look of the game
Disadvantages: The story and way too dark.
Doom, one of the best selling computer games of the 90’s became another of a long line of games to make the move over to the big screen at the end of 2005. It had a brief release into the cinemas and then sank without a trace, resurfacing on DVD just a scant few months later.
Doom should have made a pretty decent action movie, it certainly had a movie style plot to the game, more so than most other games that have ended up as games… Mortal Combat & Street Fighter but not enough to become bogged down by trying to stick to the complex plots like Silent Hill.
Doom the game was a first person shooter, meaning you played the character from your own viewpoint, exploring a base on Mars investigating what happened to the scientists that were working there and killing everything you come across.
Doom the film follows that idea as much as it can, though it reverses the numbers on the two sides. Instead of a lone soldier taking on the creatures in the base a group of marines are sent in, instead of their being hordes of creatures to fight there is a limited number. From a film point of view this is a sensible decision, as we, the viewers, want the tension and drama of what is going to happen next. With just one protagonist the film would never have that edge of your seat feeling, that worry about who is going to die next. So it was an obvious choice to take a group of marines so it wouldn’t become an example of a modern day Arnie film and the disagreements between the two main characters (Karl Urban as John Grimm and The Rock as Sarge) even tweaks that up a notch adding another level to the story.
The plot of the film is very basic, it is an action film after all, and revolves around a scientific research base on Mars. There is a ‘Level 5’ problem, the worst that is possible and there has been no contact from the base. The marines are called in and sent with 3 priorities… to find out what had occurred on the base, to rescue the scientists and to recover the research date they had been working on.
What they find though is not quite what they expected and the simple mission they hoped for turns into something far worse!
The best way to describe Doom is to compare it to the scene in Aliens where the Marines enter the base and encounter the Aliens for the first time, except instead of being a five-ten minute section of the film it is pretty much the whole 100 minutes. It has the same feel as the 10 minute section, soldiers entering a base, not knowing what to expect but supremely confident in their abilities to deal with anything and everything.
Cross that with a vaguely similar plotline to Resident Evil involving scientific experimentation with human test subjects and you will have the basic idea of what Doom is aiming for.
Doom is a fun no brainer of a film, it is not a particularly good one but will give the person who rents or buys it exactly what the expect to get. No one is likely to be looking for anything deeper than you would normally receive in this type of film and they will not get it. If you’ve read any review of Doom, played the game or even read the blurb on it you will get what you want.
It is an out and out action packed, roller coaster of a ride, a non stop gun fest and is as good as you would expect it to be depending on how you feel about this kind of film.
The film has too little going on to entice any but the ardent action film and while I did enjoy it while watching it it soon faded from my memory as there is nothing in it worth remembering once it has finished apart from one scene where the literally copy the style and look of the game for a brief sequence. This is the one clever touch in the film and almost makes it worth recommending to everyone, but not quite, a five-minute sequence is not enough to make it a great film.
One of the big downsides of the film is the fact that it is set inside a base with no lighting most of the time, it really is too dark to see what is going on sometimes. I know they are setting the scene but sometimes it does help to have some lighting so you can actually see what is happening.
Surprisingly though the acting in the film is above the standard you would expect from this kind of film. The Rock and Karl Urban are both good, and their antagonistic attitude to each other does at least expand the story a little bit more. They have some diabolical lines to deliver and they do it with a bit more quality then you would be expecting.
Dexter Fletcher (yes the one from Press Gang!) and Rosamund Pike also make good use of their limited time on screen. Pike especially does well with the scenes where she is with her estranged brother, Grimm.
All in all Doom is going to give you what you expect from it. Almost certainly whatever you think of the idea of a film based on an all out shoot ‘em up is what you will actually think of the film if you see it!
Summary: Will be exactly as you expect it to be, either way.
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