Doomsday

Plot synopsis:
It's 2008 and the Reaper virus has spread throughout Scotland, resulting in the country being walled off by the British government. A Scottish woman brings her young daughter, who has an injured eye, to soldiers for rescue. The mother convinces the soldier to airlift her daughter to safety. She then hands the girl a letter. Years later and it seems the contained population is dying out. Another decade later and the virus reappears; this time in London. Prime Minister John Hatcher (Alexander Siddig) and his puppeteer, Michael Canaris (David O'Hara), share news with domestic security cheif, Captain Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins), of survivours in Scotland, believing there to be a cure. They ask him to send in a team into the walled-off area to find medical researcher, Dr. Kane (Malcolm McDowell), who was last known to be working on a cure in Scotland. Nelson chooses Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), who was the little girl from the beginning of the movie. She has had her lost eye replaced with a cybernetic one and leads the team.To the north of the wall, whilst investigating Kane's location, Sinclair's team are ambushed by plague survivours. Some of the team are killed, Sinclair and Dr. Talbot (Sean Pertwee) are captured whilst Sergeant Norton (Adrian Lester) and Dr. Stirling (Darren Morfitt) escape. Sinclair is left in a cell and subjected to torture by the leader of the survivours, Sol (Craig Conway) and his 'assistant', Viper (Lee-Anne Liebenberg). Dr. Talbot is barbecued alive before the entire survivour population and then eaten. During this ritual, Sinclair escapes from her cell and comes across Kane's daughter, Cally (MyAnna Buring) who is also imprisoned. Freed by Sinclair, Cally takes her to a nearby waiting train which is being manned by her friend Joshua, (Martin Compston). Norton and Stirling meet up with them as the train begins moving also being chased by Sol and the survivours. The train takes them to the mountains where they take a shortcut through a hidden military facility to the castle where Kane dwells. The team are surrounded by Kane's medieval soldiers. Joshua is killed and everyone else surrender to the soldiers. Sinclair is told by Kane that the survivours are naturally immune to the virus and that Sol is his son who he has been warring with. She also discovers that there is no cure for the virus. Sinclair defeats Kane's executioner, Telamon (Hennie Bosman), and escapes the castle with help from the team. They retreat to the facility where they find a Bentley in storage. They decide to use it in an escape but Norton is killed in the process.In London, political leaders plan to cut off the 'hot spots' where the virus is spreading. Canaris convinces Hatcher to let the infected population dwindle before sharing any cure Sinclair's team may bring back so the population is easier to control. Although the government leaders are isolated, an infected man infiltrates the building and infects Hatcher. Knowing he has the virus, Hatcher commits suicide and Canaris takes over his position as Prime Minister.In Scotland, Sinclair, Cally and Stirling run into Sol's men on the highway and lead them into a car chase. Sol attempts to hijack the Bentley, but while he is on the roof, Sinclair plows the car through a roadblocked bus, decapitating him. Using a GPS cell phone also taken from the facility, Sinclair summons a government gunship and hands over the cure to Canaris: the immune survivor Cally from whose blood a vaccine can be replicated. Canaris, who arrives with the gunship, shares his plan with Sinclair to withhold the cure for political reasons and invites her back to London. Sinclair chooses to stay and goes to find her old home located at the address on the envelope her mother had left her. Nelson, having been given the envelope by Sinclair before she left on the mission, finds her there. Sinclair provides Nelson a video of her conversation with Canaris, which she recorded with her cybernetic eye. Nelson takes the recording back to London and airs it publicly, exposing Canaris' plan to hold back the cure. Sinclair returns to the location where she and her team were first attacked by the cannibalistic tribe and, presenting them with Sol's severed head, is cheered as their new leader.

Tags: boring, murder, violence, cult, psychedelic, entertaining, sadist, sci-fi

Review:
Writer and Director Neil  Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) an obvious student of genre  movies, has managed to smoothly craft together a cinematic  Frankenstein's monster of sci-fi action clichés.
I have to admit, it was somewhat surreal watching such a film on the big screen, particularly the extended Sol/feast scene, which gets pretty nutty.Rhona Mitra plays the team leader of the squad sent into the hot zone.
A totally deranged, over-the-top splatfest with hideous viral deaths galore, some of the best post-holocaust punk makeup and chase scenes since Road Warrior, brilliant use of 1980's dance music (Adam and the Ants, Frankie Goes to Hollywood--the placement of Siouxie and the Banshees' "Spellbound" and a Fine Young Cannibals track at the punk barbecue is simply inspired), a coliseum battle-to-the-death, a bizarre interlude in a Scottish fiefdom that feels as if the movie took a fast detour into the Shire, and the coolest star turn by a UK car since Harry Potter's posse made one fly.
It's not great art, but trust me, if you enjoyed Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Planet Terror, Escape from New York/L.A., and/or any recent zombie movie, you can't miss this one..
He's also the director of The Descent (2005), an incredible thriller with great tastes of horror with an outstanding grand finale.Of course that Doomsday is not so refined like his previous movie, but while the The Descent is all about technical perfection, Neil Marshall seems like just having fun here, and that's what makes this movie so enjoyable, because it's thrilling without being intelligent, it's funny without being crappy, it's frightening without being predictable and also predictable without being unpleasant.
Right to the point: Neil Marshall is not afraid to dare and play with clichés in action movies over the decades.Doomsday has some resemblances to his previous movie: it's all surrounded by a female character; the main character has to deal with "things" that somehow survived in a stark place and the characters has to deal with extreme conditions.The main character is performed by Rhona Mitra, an actress who is gradually gaining prominence and more interesting major roles mainly in action movies.
The movie is all about her, and Rhona Mitra was a good choice for the role because she has all the qualities and flaws that fits perfectly to the character.If you like action movies but it's not worried to dare something a little different from what is being produced in the last few years, this is an excellent choice.
One thing about a deadly virus it always gives people bad dress sense.Marshall has made his own bed here and must take responsibility for a lack of imagination, I believe he has stated he wanted this one to be "for the fans", so they could "guess the films he was homaging", but it can't take away from the fact that he has single handedly stolen ideas from Mad Max, Escape from New York, 28 days later, Ivanhoe, Gladiator, Indiana Jones and a host of other genre films.
From my comments you might think I hated this film....I didn't, I don't know why but somehow against my better judgement, I actually enjoyed it, its escapism and fantasy on another level, its not great by any means but if you want a mindless entertainment for a couple of hours, this one fit's the bill.
Marshall makes no excuses for paying homage to his heroes George Miller and John Carpenter (hell, he even named two characters in this movie after them).Like "Escape From New York" and "Mad Max", "Doomsday" demands a lot of suspension of disbelief to be enjoyable.
Marshall's love for the project is somehow transmitted to the viewer and actually gives you a very pleasant feeling.If you're able and willing to turn off your brain, "Doomsday" can be a very entertaining, old-fashioned action movie.
It is basically a mix of the Mad Max films in Scotland but also throw in some scenes from 28 Days Later, Resident Evil, LOTR and Braveheart.If you can imagine that then you'll have a pretty good idea what to expect - no, I didn't think you could.It does just massively rip off all the above but as I said, I'm not claiming its good, just a lot of fun.Added bonus is the great music choices which just add to the fun - "Good Tning" by FYC when the main lunatic introduces himself to the crowd and "Two Tribes" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood for the big car chase.Not gonna win an Oscar but a hell of a ride..
At this point I have already been a fan of writer/director Neil Marshall, as I have already seen Dog Soldiers and The Descent and are among my favorite modern horror films.
With evidence of survivors inside the quarantine zone, the authorities realise that some form of cure must have been found and dispatch a military unit led by Major Eden Sinclair, to retrieve it.I can totally understand the bad reviews for this film and why generally it was not that well received but I think a lot of professional critics forgot that all Neil Marshall was doing was what plenty of Hollywood blockbusters have been doing for quite some time  eschewing logic in favour of pace, action and spectacle.
Hoskins, Lester, O'Hara, Pertwee, McDowell and others all do what is required of them  good enough but not great.Doomsday is a strange film, which wears the reasons for its relative failure all over its running time.
I usually avoid blood and guts type films like the plague, but Doomsday is a movie that makes the effort not to take its self too seriously!
So when I heard that Neil Marshall, the director of the great Dog Soldiers, was making an end-of-the-world movie, my sadistic little heart leapt for joy.
Neil Marshall, the multi-talented British director who previously made the gory but nevertheless tasteful "Dog Soldiers" and "The Descent", surprises and primarily pleases his fan-base audiences with this mega-outrageous, campy and tasteless SciFi-horror-action hybrid that is simply destined to become a cult classic within the next couple of years already.
The two main inspirations for the film are obviously "Mad Max" and "Escape from N.Y.", but talking in terms of absurd plot twists, OTT set pieces and flamboyant costume designs, uncompromising gore, deliberately bad acting performances and insane character drawings, "Doomsday" is actually far more reminiscent to the (mainly Italian) rip-off industry of that time.
It blatantly rips off the plot from Escape from New York (a character is even named Carpenter in apparent homage), the set-up will be compared to 28 Days Later (though any "massive viral outbreak in Britain" plot will get that now), steals a lot of design and atmosphere from Mad Max and still manages to throw in some medieval nonsense in there as well.Fight scenes were of the terrible, overly-fast, shaky-cam, quick-cut style making them a jumbled mess and none of the effects really felt that impressive.
Almost none of the plot has any semblance of sense with almost every action occurring for little to no reason and characters being encountered so randomly that the writing doesn't feel quite good enough to even be considered lazy.In all I really enjoyed most of the films this is derived from.
The film begins as a semi-serious, semi-playful riff on "Escape from New York" (most of the UK becomes a walled-in quarantine zone...) and "28 Days Later" (...containing a population stricken by plague), as bureaucrats enlist Eden Sinclair (Kate Beckinsa...er, Rhona Mitra), a cop with a traumatic past (and one false eye) to lead a group of cops into a London given over to anarchy and ostentatiously-pierced scumbags to find a cure.What's most stunning--and disheartening--about "Doomsday" is how it never feels like Marshall's own vision at work.
You'll laugh, and laugh some more, as Sinclair and her team are captured by the savages living in the seemingly abandoned cities, who put on wild musical numbers to Fine Young Cannibals music (ho-ho) and look like rejects from Miller's iconic movies.But even some of this stuff, with its frenetic action and pace- and Marshall's editing, which I'm not sure is done via pressure from the studios or just trying to one-up Paul WS Anderson- and the sheer magnitude of crazy sci-fi atmosphere, comes off like it's out of a fever dream that Marshall had after a night of binging on 80s genre flicks.
It goes without saying that by the time our sort-of hero meets the medieval (like Middle Age England) hold-up of Malcolm McDowell's Kane, we just give up thinking that it's entertaining aside from the 'so-stupid-it's-beautiful' sense.But if there's any sin that Marshall does commit with his action and other sequences, more often than not (and I say more often than not as there is a car chase Ala Road Warrior climax that ranks with some of the most uproariously delirious footage I've seen in a while), is that he doesn't craft them for maximum impact.
With the excluding factor of the blood-lust, including lots of limbs and heads dismembered, the blood that there is in buckets, it's shot and edited at times that you can't even really see what the hell is going on, as though if you blink you'll miss most of a fight scene or beheading.Combining this with enough illogical steps to fill a small canyon, and some lackluster star power (David O'Hara, who was great as the deadpan Fitzy in the Departed, is a cold fish as a power-hungry tyrant in a business suit), and cinematography that comes straight out of glossy car commercials, Doomsday is a disappointment, with the only encouragement being that now that this is out of his system maybe he can make another fantastic film next go-around..
Firstly, I could weep - Neil Marshall was meant to be the great hope - a new voice creating film that was tense, memorable, and palpably free of conventions.Secondly, nothing against a good homage film - if you grew up enjoying Mad Max and Robin Hood (Or whatever) then fine make a film that is a homage to it; but please, make it well.Doomsday has a pretty redundant plot.
It's way too much in the "eat the human" theme for those expecting a Mad Max type film but probably too so-so for hardcore horror fans - it just slides between too many chairs to really work.Plus it is just off-pace, we jump from one action scene to the next but the camera never creates a storyline, it just cuts, short cuts, etc; The actors all try to muddle their way through but most of the time look and feel like computer game dolls.Given the pedigree this is way below par, and is a crude offering - and I don't mean that in any positive sense.
I just came back from the theater because I got to watch the special screening of it, and it was a really good movie, if you're into blood, car chases, action, and comedy, you so definitely go and watch Doomsday.
So it's up to Snake Plisken....oh wait, wrong movie (but in my defense this IS pretty much "Escape from New York" with a female hero, so it's an easy mistake to make) Anyways, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra) goes behind the wall with an elite team to find this cure amidst the apocalyptic wasteland within 48 hours.Not content to just ape "Escape from New York", the movie also throws a bit of "Mad Max", "Aliens", "the Warriors" and a few others into the mix.
Don't get me wrong, it IS a huge letdown when you view it in terms of Neil Marshall's other films (Both Dog Soldiers and The Descent are top of the line entertainment), this one comes up lacking, but at the same time the movie isn't totally without merit.
terrible terrible movie....im a huge neil marshall fan....the descent i think is just a truly incredible film....and im also a massive dog soldiers fan so i went into this film with extremely high hopes however i don't think I've ever been so let down by a film....it was just bits and pieces of other films poorly coppied and pierced together...i just didn't see the point of either whilst watching it was so distracting to be noticing the films Marshall was taking bits from...noticing all the references to Mad Max and the bits taken from 28 days later....i just think it was generally a poor film....the script was just dull and kinda pointless....it had so many plot holes i lost count....the acting was dreadful....especially malcolm mcdowall who just came over sounding all weird nothing else...just generally a poor poor film....for all those out-there who want to watch a good neil Marshall movie go and watch the descent i promise you will not be disappointed....but avoid this movie at all cost.
The movie jumps randomly from 28 Days Later to Aliens to King Arthur to Gladiator to Mad Max 2 and finally to Escape from New York.
You really want to watch Mad Max, Escape from New York, Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, and just for kicks, let's throw in King Arthur and some 80's big hair bands in the mix.
This is just a shockingly bad movie, especially coming from the director of "Dog Soldiers." Think of "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," "The Road Warrior," "Escape from New York," "Land of the Dead," and "28 Weeks Later": "Doomsday" steals scenes and iconography from all of them.
I think it's safe to say this is the first time a film has ever transitioned from "Outbreak" to "28 Days Later" to "Children of Men" to "Escape From New York" to "Lord of the Rings" to "Gladiator" before finally settling into "Mad Max" for the big finish.
How am I expected to enjoy my time, if the movie is a very poor blend of many films past, with nothing new?
I HAVE watched those past great films, even if only action-packed they might have appeared to be, enjoyed them very much, thank you, and they, in the end, catapulted themselves into the cult classics that we love so much, best examples of their genre which are to be viewed over and over, anyway.This film, however, has absolutely nothing new or meaningful to add to the mix.
I mean that because this movie just wastes my time with details that just don't fit together, looks like a poor collage, and rips of many good films of the genre.My suggestion to you is, if you want to empty your mind, have some fun and pass some time, at least do it with a film, action or not, which deserves your dough, and doesn't cheat you this cheaply!
How can you pay homage to such great movies like Madmax, Aliens, 28 Days Later, Escape from New York and even..........yes even Salute The Jugger by making this crap.Mr Marshall......There is paying homage....
This film is unacceptable.I'm not going to get into the blatant rips this movie makes from Escape from New York, Aliens, Mad Max 2, 28 Days Later et al.
No, a film could only be this bad if everyone involved made a pact to create the very very worst Z-grade action-gore post- apocalyptic sci-fi movie ever made.
But the team gets more than it bargained for when it enters the famed "hot zone" of Glascow - namely an out-of-control society where any semblance of morality and law-and-order has long since broken down, the inhabitants have turned into insatiable cannibals, and one sector of the population at least - in an act of supreme screen writing idiocy - has donned Medieval attire and retreated to a castle deep in the nation's interior to begin the process of building their world anew amidst jousting tournaments and fight-to-the-death gladiatorial contests.Written and directed by Neil Marshall, the appropriately titled "Doomsday" comes replete with stilted dialogue, wooden acting, laughable action sequences, a corny hail-to-Dorothy-the-wicked-witch-is-dead conclusion, and the kind of grunge-chic that has become the standard-issue look for any and all post-apocalyptic tales since the "Mad Max" movies of the 1980s.
It would take up too much time to name every movie homaged by Marshall, but primarily we can call it a blend of Escape From New York & the Mad Max movies, with any killer plague movie thrown into the mix too.Doomsday has many problems.
OK....maybe not never - I have seen some movies that I have stopped before they finished - but only a couple, and they were REALLY bad.I am a fan of sci-fi, action and all that sort of stuff, and love getting the adrenalin flowing by watching a good action scene, but my pulse can't have reached more than about 30 during the entire course of the film.I ended up channel-hopping to normal TV during the last hour, and when I found nothing else on, I watched the last 45 minutes of the film in double speed, as I didn't want to just turn it off, in case it got better, but wanted to waste as little of my life on it as possible, in case it didn't.It tried to be lots of things, but failed in all of them.
Those THREE points are in no way remotely similar to the way they are used in the previous movies.Neil Marshall's DOOMSDAY is an entertaining gore riddled science fiction ACTION film.
Dog Soldiers was amazing the Descent was also fantastic but i knew that Neil MArshall would come acropper at some point and sadly this is it.The Trailer looked pretty good the film is just a mess from the basic write ups and the trailer you think this is gonna be Mad Max meets Escape from New York which seemed OK but what do we get?