Doom: Movie, DVD, HD DVD Review (2005)

(Originally published 2005)

In the growing legion of video games turned into movies, Andrzej Bartzowiak’s grunting, live-action cartoon, “Doom,” has enough manic energy and fiery moments to be among the more watchable of what has long been an undesirable lot.

Those who sat through the hell of “Resident Evil,” “Mortal Kombat,” “Tomb Raider” and that forgotten jewel, “Super Mario Bros.,” might dismiss the movie as junk without seeing it, but the film is what it is and it does what it does better than most will expect.

From Dave Callaham and Wesley Strick’s script, “Doom” is trash sci-fi that achieves a lean, focused center and final act that’s admirable in the tension it creates.

Set sometime in the distant future, the movie stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Sarge, a tattooed beast with a perpetual scowl and an attitude problem who is leading an elite core of Marines on a rescue mission to Mars. There, at an underground research facility led by the geneticist Sam (Rosamund Pike), a mysterious 24th human chromosome has been discovered, studied and found to be wreaking havoc on what’s left of the planet’s residents.

The chromosome is akin to a virus. Should one have the misfortune of coming in contact with it, it either will transform them into a towering monster with a healthy appetite for flesh, a zombie worthy of anything in Romero’s “Dead” series, or it will allow them superhuman powers that can be used for good or evil.

Since the film has no interest in exploring the specifics of such a chromosome or how it came to manifest itself (just imagine the brain cramp the writers would have suffered had they gone there), onward it blasts, with Sarge’s crew rapidly dwindling as they rush through the metallic corridors with guns blazing, dialogue tanking, monsters lurking, pecs bouncing, people being slaughtered at every turn.

With the film’s genesis steeped in computer code, “Doom” predictably lacks soul, but it does generate the raw, sketchy rhythm of a B-movie, which gives it a few gross-out jolts. The film is designed for fans of the game, who will dig the point-of-view perspective Bartzowiak’s creates toward the end (a direct nod to the game), and who likely will overlook the cheesy tough talk and lapses in logic in the wake of the many decapitations, severed body parts, spurting jugular veins and zombies busily littering the landscape as zombies are wont to do.

Grade: C+