Review: Doom

Marines led by Sarge (The Rock, not his best performance) venture to Mars where a science lab is being terrorised by an unseen nasty that proceeds to pick off scientists and marines alike one by one. Karl Urban plays John Grimm, whose estranged sister (Rosamund Pike, completely bland) is at the lab. Dexter Fletcher also works there, and is in a wheelchair…I guess that’s supposed to be character depth. Yup, the story really is that thin, folks, and the characters are even thinner than tissue paper.

Aside from one or two cool visual touches employed by director Andrzej Bartkowiak (the average but not awful “Exit Wounds” and “Romeo Must Die”), this lame 2005 video game adaptation is like a second or third generation “Aliens” rip-off (with a little “Resident Evil”, which wasn’t half-bad), except this one has no payoff- it literally is just 90 minutes of walking around dark tunnels and pointing big-arse guns, occasionally even firing them. Snore.

 

The Rock is sadly underused (his character is all business, which ain’t no fun) and Urban ain’t a good enough actor or charismatic enough to carry a whole film (His one facial expression from “LOTR” turns up again here- a sort of furrowed brow expression of concern or weariness. I mean, at least The Rock can move each individual eyebrow on its own!). But the gory opening sequence is really well-done (especially when, before the credits, the Universal logo is shown to be a depiction of Mars instead of Earth), the final fight will delight wrestling fans, and there’s a cool but brief first person POV sequence near the end that attempts to emulate the game.

Uninspired screenplay by David Callaham (“Tell-Tale”, “The Expendables”) and Wesley Strick (“Wolf”, “Arachnophobia”, Scorsese’s ‘Why Bother?’ remake of “Cape Fear”) hasn’t an original bone in its body. Surely the game had more action sequences than this bore?! Underwhelming, even for this type of thing.

 

Rating: C-