Review of Doomsday (2008) by Van R — 21 May 2010

In the exciting new British science fiction shoot'em up "Doomsday," writer & director Neil Marshall of "The Descent" pays tribute to some of the best post-apocalyptic thrillers from the 1970s and the 1980s. This inventive actioneer lives up to its R-rating with blood-splattered, grindhouse gore galore and audacious high octane heroics that will have you standing on your hind legs and howling for more.

The set-up for "Doomsday" draws on John Carpenter's classic "Escape from New York" with Kurt Russell. Marshall turns the hero into a heroine with "Number 23" actress Rhona Mitra playing a Teflon-tough cop. Like Russell's one-eyed Snake Plissken, Mitra's heroic Major Eden Sinclair is shy one eye, too. The difference is the British Department of Domestic Security has replaced her missing eye with a ping-pong ball sized prosthetic orb that can be removed from her socket and rolled around corners. Activating a ultra-slick Dick Tracy style wristwatch, Eden can see what the indestructible eyeball records on a disc in the watch. Like Snake Plissken, Eden wears a form-fitting black outfit and can shoot the ears off her opponents with single shots. Eden's other plus is that she doesn't stop and drool as one of her less fortunate fellow officers when he gapes at a naked babe rising from a bath tub with a pump action shotgun in her fists.

Anyway, a virus called 'the Reaper' breaks out in Scotland, and the British erect a new version of Hadrian's Wall. The wall sports a state-of-the-art surveillance system with a remote control arsenal of machine guns. The virus infects Glasgow and people die left and right as their faces erupt with ghoulish pustules. Katherine Sinclair (Emma Cleasby of "Dog Soldiers") desperately wants to get her young daughter Eden (Christine Tomlinson) safely out of Scotland. Before she can bundle Eden aboard a military helicopter, her daughter loses her eye in a deadly shoot-out brought on by a frightened British riot control trooper. Katherine doesn't survive the slaughter, but she sees her daughter fly to safety. Afterward, British authorities seal the wall between Scotland and Britain, impose a quarantine, and nobody crosses the border alive again.

"Doomsday" leaps to the year 2035. Eden is now one of the best D.D.S. agents in the field. U.K. military satellites provide alarming images of survivors in the quarantine zone, and Prime Minister John Hatcher (Alexander Siddig of "Syriana") and Michael Canaris (David O'Hara of "The Departed") wonder if the survivors have concocted a cure. As sensational as the satellite photos are, these high-ranking Brits are doubly concerned because the virus has migrated now to Britain. They need a serum soon or the rest of the British Isles is doomed. Hatcher and Canaris mount a suicidal mission to find the cure. Top British cop Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins of "Unleashed") taps Major Sinclair to take charge of the mission. A scientist, Dr. Talbot (Sean Pertwee of "Event Horizon"), accompanies the D.D.S., and officials secretly open the wall for them to cross over. Since neither Hatcher nor Canaris want to fuel speculation, they send Sinclair and company in on the ground rather than violate a decade's old 'no fly zone' to dispatch them.

Our heroes are shocked by their reception in Glasgow. Indeed, survivors do exist. These survivors are wild-eyed, psychotic cannibals that must have watched the Mel Gibson "Mad Max" sequel "The Road Warrior" because they dress like punk rockers from Perdition. They destroy the two armored carriers hauling our heroes, and they barbecue poor Talbot alive and then serve him to the crowd. The chief villain Sol (Craig Conway of "Dog Soldiers") lets Sinclair live. Sol wants to use her as a ruse to fool the D.D.S. and spearhead a British invasion. Catching Sinclair and keeping this brawny babe in chains is something not even Sol can do. Sinclair escapes, assembles her surviving soldiers, and they plunge into the forests, only to come face-to-face with army of horsemen straight out of "Excalibur" suited up in armor with swords and lances.

Although you've seen what happens here before in several vintage sci-fi films, Marshall takes these blasts from the past and revitalizes them with his own brand of adrenalin-laced hysteria. "Doomsday" ranks as the best butt-kicking action melodrama that the U.K. has exported since the "Underworld" movies with Kate Beckinsale. Not surprising, slim, sexy action starlet Rhona Mitra who toplines "Doomsday" has been cast in the third "Underworld: The Rise of the Lycans" due out in 2009.