Doomsday, aka Dog Soldiers Reunited

What do Terry, Joe, Spoon, and the Sarge from Dog Soldiers have in common?

They're all in Doomsday. Although only Spoon really gets much of a role, and even that is mostly as the guy following along whose presence really doesn't affect the story. At all. He's a foil. He might as well have foil wrapped around his head with a sign following him around that says, "Foil." I almost started hating him myself, even though he was spoon.

The lead character is a one-eyed, smoking badass who just doesn't give a shit (one of the other characters underlines this by saying, "You just don't give a shit, do you?") whose mission is to go into a quarantined zone where the locals have gone savage, on a secret mission to retrieve something of vital importance to the country.

And it's not Snake Plissken. (Or so they claim. Pretty much the only difference is it's a woman with a bionic eye. Oh, and she's emotionally scarred and out for nonspecific revenge.)

Take one part Mad Max, one part 28 Days Later, and one part Escape From New York. Mix thoroughly. Voila! Doomsday.

I was hoping there would be a zombie epidemic in this film, but I don't think the writers ever worked out whether or not the virus made people psychotic, or if people just went psychotic from fear/panic. At one point, an infected person murders a few people in cold blood, but it never explains why. I guess he just had issues.

The production values were pretty much off the hook and made the film great to watch at times (it also had some great shots of Scottish countryside), which is sad, because the writing was bottom-shelf and the characters weren't even stock; they had virtually no character at all.

The Mad Max reject villains and their over-the-top villainy were cool, but then I had a moment where I sat back and said, "Okay, now this is just silly." You see, the second group of bad guys had just wandered off the set of BBC's Robin Hood show, seeing as they were dressed in perfect medieval armor and carrying bows and things. They even hung out in a castle (I guess they got the weapons from the castle, but come ON! There was even a hawk in one of the scenes, and an old guy with a skullcap reading a mouldy tome). Oh, and they were led by Malcom McDowell in a fur cloak.

The movie also starred the guy who played Doctor Bashir in DS9 and Bob Hoskins, looking older and jowlier than ever. Not that either really matters.

I give the movie points for some imaginative sequences, particularly with the Mad Max ripoff post-apocalyptic villain gang, because I have a soft spot for that sort of thing, I suppose. But I just can't support the movie as a whole. When we got to the Renfaire rejects as a villain group, my brain said, "The hell with this, I'm going back to sleep" and my body spent the rest of the movie watching alone.

That wasn't a particularly coherent review, but it wasn't a particularly good movie, and my brain is still fighting me. I'm inclined to give it 4 stars on Netflix just because Hollywood needs more cannibalistic savages in leather. But I won't, because that would be just dishonest. Three stars for effort.

I think the bottom line is that a movie like this needs a strong leading character that the audience enjoys spending time with, watching him or her kicking ass and getting into all kinds of bizarre situations. This movie just doesn't deliver that. The heroine is, to use a Kevin Smith line, weak sauce.

And the hot savage woman who appeared in all the promo work? Dead in the first third of the movie, although that's not the last we see of her. I think she spends about as much screentime dead as alive.

Just like the movie as a whole.

Last thought: at one point in the movie, our heroes stumble across the BIGGEST HERD OF COWS EVAR. Why, then, are the bad guys all cannibals? I guess they just really like the taste of people....