ViewGuide

Created Dec 01, 2008 12:43AM PST • Edited Dec 01, 2008 12:43AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Neil Marshall follows up “The Descent” with a schizophrenic action film not sure what it should be and when, though still managing to be entertainingly insane.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Rhona Mitra is one attractive lady, but her acting isn’t good enough throughout to be totally without question. The supporting cast is filled with British stars, and any film with Bob Hoskins is gonna have some promise!

5. Male Stars Good 3.0

   (I believe that the men in the cast are all distinctly support, and so I’ve adjusted the score accordingly, whilst talking about them in co-stars).

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

   Rhona Mitra plays Eden, the bad-ass leader of the group sent into Scotland to retrieve a cure. Part Mad Max, part Snake Plissken, she kicks ass and quips with a stiff British accent – making it a totally bizarre performance. The problem here is that her attractiveness will allow most men to just ignore her acting, because she’s a strong, dominating female lead, and the head of the army unit – a true film heroine you would not want to mess with.

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

   Myanna Buring plays Cally, a survivor who assists the army team going in, and as the second woman in a film with such an independent character as Eden Sinclair, her ‘damsel in distress’ performance seems a little diminished really. Lee-Ann Liebenberg plays Viper, the crazily tatooed girlfriend of Sol, and with what little time she has (and no speaking part) she conveys a summation of the many co-stars and extras here – they’re supposed to be rabid, disassociated people, and acting as bizarrely as this seems to fit that perfectly.

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

   This is probably one of the most eclectic supporting male casts ever; Bob Hoskins to Adrian Lester, Malcolm McDowell to Alexander Siddig – there’s some underrated and excellent British actors here. And being as it’s a film set in London or Scotland, it’s befitting and refreshing to see that they’re indeed all British. Hoskins is Mitra’s commander, one of those ‘world-weary’ cops, but it’s Bob Hoskins – he makes the guy that much more grouchy. Malcolm McDowell exudes a Kurtz-like role as Kane, a doctor lost in Scotland and gone rogue – though I cannot watch him without thinking of Linderman in “Heroes”. Siddig plays the slippery Prime Minister, and David O’Hara is corruption personified as Canaris, the real power behind the PM. Adrian Lester plays the army support to Mitra’s Sinclair, and he continues to show that he can act in pretty much anything (from the BBC’s “Hustle” to “The Day After Tomorrow”). Final mention has to go to Craig Conway’s Sol, the crazy leader of the survivors in Scotland – you will not forget his incredibly bizarre performance here.

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Marshall steers away from all-out horror to create an actioner that is miles better than other films in its league; the homages especially set it aside. The soundtrack is excellent for such a movie, and the visuals are spectacular, but the dialogue is a little hammy.

11. Direction Very Good 3.5

    It’s pretty apparent here that Marshall has been given free reign to indulge his vision, and he creates a taut and bombastic thriller that, if made by Michael Bay, would probably be far more popular and well-known. As it is, Marshall can present tension, drama and gore concurrently, and it’s interesting to think what he could do with a big job on a Hollywood pic.

12. Play OK 2.5

    In paying homage to such cult classics as “Escape from New York”, Marshall inputs little character quirks such as Sinclair’s propensity for cigarettes, and whilst some of these are carried off well, other lines of dialogue are pretty terrible (most of what Sol says in fact, particularly if you can understand him).

13. Music Good 3.0

    The soundtrack, by Tyler Bates (300) is epic, totally reflective of the vistas and set-oieces that are presented on-screen throughout. The use of songs such as “Two Tribes” amongst others also sets the film across from contemporaries, as the atmosphere changes with the addition of such famous pieces, and they somehow fit perfectly with what’s being shown!

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    From the visions of an abandoned Glasgow to the reinforced, imperious Hadrian’s Wall boundary, Marshall employs impressive CG and landscapes, using the wildernesses of Scotland and South Africa to convey the wild nature of the segregated country. The gore effects are squeamishly good, particularly in regard to the virus sufferers, and the stunts are Bay-like in their execution; when a Bentley goes flying through a bus, or an armoured vehicle ploughs through a wall and explodes, you see the same propensity for realistic destruction that you’ve seen in “Bad Boys” or “Transformers”.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.7

    Like “Dog Soldiers” and “The Descent”, “Doomsday” is disgustingly gory (as in setting people on fire and seeping sore gory), and filled with profanity. There’s no sexual stuff at all.

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Brutal 3.5

19. Rudeness Profane 3.5

21. Reality

    Glib 2.0

    The idea of a virus being this bad is a more legible idea than that of a zombie outbreak; these people just die, and so everything that ensues, whilst a little crazy in places, is not beyond the bounds of realism, unbelievably enough.

22. Circumstantial Glib 2.0

23. Biological Glib 2.0

24. Physical Glib 2.0