Doomsday (2008)

Doomsday. From what I've already seen, I had a reason to believe that Neil Marshall is at least a supporter of female gender domination equality. Both of his films that I've seen so far shows exactly just that. A heroine or heroines that live up to a task usually reserved for their male counterpart. Not that I'm against it, mind you.

Doomsday takes our world into the UK in the future where a virus outbreak prompted the government to resort into a drastic measure of martial law that seen Glasgow and most of the northern part of the UK quarantined-slash-surrounded with a tall impenetrable steel wall. The idea is simple, let no one in or out of the quarantined area. Soon, the quarantined area - and millions that lived within it - became no-man's land, abandoned, and forgotten. Thirty years later, when the general belief is that nobody left alive within the area that was Glasgow and northern UK, a similar case of virus outbreak that once engulfed Glasgow broke in London. It would seems that a similar drastic measure of martial law was soon to be applied in London. However, as it turns out, the government still has something in its sleeve. It was known - only to the selected few, of course - that started from three years prior, some signs of life was recorded within the wall. It was a sign that there's some way to overcome the virus. Soon, a team was dispatched into the wall. Its mission is simple, to bring back survivor or vaccine or anything that proves that the virus is indeed curable. Led by Major Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) who given her history deemed fit to the task, the team wasn't expected to survive. After all, it was thirty years since the wall was closed and thus made whatever law or values from its inhabitants are somewhat different.

I actually liked this film despite facts that the heroine reminds me of Charlize Theron's Aeon Flux (which is bad), thugs that remind me to Mad Max or that video California from Tupac, and a couple of inconsistencies that left a gap in my train of logic thought. This film has an ample supply of gore and violence to make horror fans happy (and me, though I had refused to acknowledge myself as a horror fan, enjoyed the severed limbs, and plenty of blood and gore that this film has to offer), bare hands fights, close quarter combat, trigger happy, and high-speed chase with tremendous amount of body counts to make any bloody action film fans happy. Indeed that this film isn't really made to goes beyond the level of an acceptance of action films that requires small attention from the brain and if you could put it where it belongs, you'd be ended up liking it as much as I do.

Doomsday is what I'd called as an "air-tight" film in which the miniscule details are crammed up in a 90 minutes of time frame. The background narrative that sets-up the film took at least five minutes, for example. Now this could prove as a turn-off to some of the casual viewers who are so used to arrive late at the theater (it bothers me, really, I mean if they can't be punctual to something in which they had to pay for tickets, how could they be punctual in other more important aspect in their life, such as work? Sigh, my fellow countrymen)

My rating: **1/2 / **** - Doomsday sets in a brooding future. However, thirty minutes off the mark and the mood was shifted into an action packed gore-fest. Not that I mind that, but it was certainly not something I had expected in the first place. For better or worse, again, if you could put this film on the level of mere entertainment, you could actually enjoy it. Assuming of course, that seeing a bloody slaughter, explicit mutilation, and various manifestation of violence of men against men doesn't put you in a state of queasiness.