Doom - Cox News Service movie review

'Doom': Plot, schmlot. Just shoot somethin'

By TOM HALLMAN
Cox News Service

Like the video game that spawned it, Doom is dark and violent, loud and gory.

Unlike the game, it's not the least bit suspenseful.

The reason? Because the game is interactive. You are in control. You decide which way to go. You choose your weapons. You pull the trigger.

Universal Pictures

'Doom'

C-

The verdict: No plot, no surprises. If you've played the game, you've already had more fun.

Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Starring: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Ben Daniels, Razaaq Adoti
Run time: 100 minutes
Release date: Oct. 21, 2005
Rating: R for strong violence/gore and language.
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In the movie, you just sit and watch. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak is in control. Sadly, it would be about as much fun to watch him play the video game for two hours as it is to see him try to navigate this sci/fi film. He gives the movie as much story as you get in the game — which isn't much.

Such as it is, here's the plot:

Scientists in a labyrinthine laboratory on Mars are being attacked by monstrous beasts. A military "Rapid Response Tactical Squad" led by a shoot-first sergeant (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) is called to save the researchers. Sarge brings seven guys on an expedition straight from Arnold Schwartzenegger's Predator. You know these guys exist only to bite the dust one-by-one. The only mystery is the method of their demise.

For the most part, these are macho brutes, the kind of men who pick up an automatic weapon, cradle it gently and mutter, "Daddy's home." But one of the squad, John Grimm, a.k.a. "Reaper" (Karl Urban), has family ties on Mars. He finds his sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) among the scientists, and she joins them in the hunt for survivors — and important research data — while menacing creatures hunt for them.

That's all you get for plot. Less even than Lara Croft gave you in the Tomb Raider movies, which faced the same transition from video game to big screen.

The real bravery in Doom comes from the director. He dares to experiment to see how many times we can look down a dark corridor or turn a sharp corner and maintain suspense. (The answer: not many.)

"The Rock" does a fair job of looking tough. Urban succeeds at appearing put-off by his colleagues, Mars and life in general. Whether this actually constitutes acting is beside the point. You didn't come to see people act. You came to see them take honkin' big guns and blow the hell out of stuff. This, they do. But to say it's anticlimactic presumes there's a climax in the first place. Not a safe assumption.

Don't expect anything spooky. When the lights go out, you won't experience fright so much as you will a sense of wonder that in 2026, the Marines haven't learned to bring along spare Eveready batteries. A single Energizer bunny might have saved dozens of lives.

The monsters are no more fearsome. These humanoid creatures — whose extra set of cromosomes supposedly make them super-strong, super-fast and super-healing — clearly didn't evolve super-smarts. They leave fully loaded machine guns behind at every turn.

Nah, don't ask why.

Just expect Doom to bring you nothing more than loud, fast-paced, clearly predictable shoot-'em-ups, with an occasional one-liner thrown in for comic... well, not-quite-relief.

Hope for anything else in vain. You may be tempted to join the zombie who bangs his head against the wall in a suicide attempt.