Doom

Doom isn't all doomb, but it runs amok like a mutant with an extra 24th chromosome

Official Doom Site
Sci-Fi/Action
Starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, Ben Daniels
Rated R (for language and intense/graphic violence)
Running Time: 100 Minutes
Released:October 21st, 2005



1 Out Of 5 Bites

I remember back in 1993 loading up Doom on my blistering-fast 25 megahertz Packard-Bell, 486SX with 4 megabytes of RAM. Oh...and it had a 2400 speed modem too, but no multimedia. My initial Doom experience with the Imps, Barons and the Spider Mastermind was less than awe-inspiring.....how menacing can they be with only a Piezo speaker? Monster-Barons can't make a decrescendoing chirping/blipping sound and still be, well, monster-ish.

Doom was the game that is widely recognized for its pioneering efforts in the 3D gaming world. Doom is the somewhat forgettable movie that wants to oblige those old-time gamers with a pat on the back in the form of a flat-lined script, much guttural oomphs and an endless barrage of patented, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, in-your-face scowls and another jump-to-my-feet-from-my-back move. You know he can do it and you might have seen it before, but it's still a nifty physical feat. The movie barely tinkers with scintillating moments, but, overall, the aftertaste is much like a cinematic Piezo, rather than high multimedia.

It wasn't a stretch to have cast The Rock as "Sarge," a no-frills hunk of kick-it muscle machine waiting for the word to corral his unit to go smear some alien tail. Though he came and did his job, he was much on the look for a way to cut his action-hero niche a la Schwarzenegger, but there wasn't much to work with. This project may not have hurt his stock in that regard, but it might not propel him much.

In the year 2046 (and some time after the release of PB 486SX), Sarge relays word to his guys that they are leaving on a mission to a Martian scientific outpost to contain a security breach, traveling there via a space portal. Upon arriving, they encounter a lovely young anthropologist (Rosamund Pike), who harbors the key to understanding what and how to handle the crisis (having mainly to do with mutated chromosome pairings). She is also the sister to Reaper (Karl Urban- who reprises the same facial expression from The Lord of the Rings apprearances). (Before they get to that, we witness mutilation number one...or is it two or three??.... by some nasties out of the shadows and witnessed by scientist Dr. Carmack- played by Robert Russell- who's reduced mainly to a blubbering mess). That's pretty much the premise from there on out....a gore-fest by monsters you never really get to see until really late. Much ordering by Sarge, much running and dying by the grunts, and mega-overload on goonies doing their eviscerations from out of the inky blackness.

The picture is mainly a way to honor those game players of yesteryear with a plot ditzy enough to be a simple excuse to whip out your B.F.G. and start blasting away. At one point, the movie adopts the first person point of view as in the game itself, with the cheesy background music. In the game, it really was loopy when you were left with only a chainsaw to do away with the baddies. By the time our hero takes it up during this first person stint, you wonder that it wouldn't be all bad if he sawed his way through the screen and carved you a quick exit out of the theater.