( 2112 )

Ok so if there are enormous herds of cattle milling about the glens, why are there cannibals? No, wait, I’ve gone and started things off too far into my thought process again … Let me start at the beginning. Neil Marshall’s Doomsday is on Cinemax again and once again, I am strangely compelled to give liking it a shot.  I can’t imagine that anyone who happens across this wouldn’t already know but for those who came in late. Marshall’s follow up to 2005’s The Descent [a pic that made it into the – reserved for a genre film – honorable mention spot on my ten best list that year – despite plenty of worthwhile competition – The Exorcism of Emily Rose,  that inspired silent The Call of Cthulhu, Haute Tension and Day Watch to name a few]  concerns something called the Reaper virus that sweeps through Scotland, causing evil government bureaucrats  to quarantine the country with an automated machine gun equipped take on Hadrian’s Wall until thirty years later when the virus gets lose in London and signs of life up in Glasgow suggest that there might be a cure. The aforementioned evil bureaucrats David O’Hara [The Departed] and Alexander Siddig [Kingdom of Heaven] recruit a team of wannabe hard-assess led by wannabe hard-ass extraordinaire Rhona Mitra [ok so to be fair Mitra is mainly extraordinarily hot and not a bad actress besides but she can only give briefly eye-patch/robotic eye adorned Major hard-ass her  best freakin' shot] to suss things out.  By which I mean battle an army of punked-out, Fine Young Cannibals-loving … well … cannibals lead by a maniacally mohawked Craig Conway and tantalizingly tattooed tongue flasher Lee-Anne Liebenberg and then a band of early bits of Excalibur rejects holed up in Blackness Castle [no really, that’s where that bit was shot] and let by a medical researcher turned mad scientist  slash Lord of all he surveys Malcolm McDowell. If that sounds a bit like Marshall chucked Metalstorm, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Escape from New York, The Warriors, No Blade of Grass, The Omega Man, The Arena, Evil Dead 2 and Predator into a cinematic blender you wouldn’t be wrong.  O’ and those of you who’ve encountered my assault on Wes Craven for pulling that crap in Cursed may be wondering how I could sit through it.

 

Well first of all, there are bad movies and then there are movies that are just bad and Doomsday is the clearly the former.  And while like Cursed, it contains not a single original idea, it evidences a clearly crazed love for the material its stealing that Cursed simply lacks. Now if you’ve read a review of it before you might think that the problems with Doomsday hinge on that there uber derivativeness and maybe on the fact that it just doesn’t make a whole  heck of a lot of sense [the out of the clear blue cannibalism is just the tip of the iceberg – believe me]. But that’s not really a problem. I mean who expects logic and reason from a film featuring a cannibal barbeque attended by the Baseball Furies [yes you read that correctly], set to a Siouxsie & the Banshees tune and featuring numerous gimps [as in bring out the ...] and a pair of post apocalyptic go-go dancers for good measure.  Honestly, Doomsday goes out of its way to remind its viewers not to take it damn seriously, so that it isn’t serious isn’t really much of a problem.  Which is not to say that it works.

 

So, what is the problem? Why do I want to like Doomsday but can’t seem to bring myself to. Well as it happens Grindhouse was on last night too and switching back and forth between the two I finally realized what was really wrong with  the film … It just isn’t cool. It wants to be, badly, but it isn’t – which is the difference enjoying  it and just wanting to and frankly it’s all Neil Marshall’s fault. He just doesn’t have whatever it is that allows certain directors – like say Rodriguez and or Tarantino – to take an actor who isn’t inherently cool and just make them cool via the psychic mutant powers of the lens.  Don’t believe me … Take a moment to compare  and contrast Knight Rider’s Sydney Tamiia Poitier and Death Proof’s Sydney Tamiia Poitier or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants starlet Alexis Bledel and The Fantastic Four’s Jessica Alba with Sin City’s Alexis Bledel and Jessica Alba .  I’m not exactly sure how it works but it’s pretty darn clean to me tonight that whatever it is that allows Robert Rodriquez to get away with casting Devon Aoki as a kick ass ninja hooker but prevents others from casting her as anything at all just isn’t in Marshall’s bag of directorial tricks and worse he seems to be unaware of that fact.  Which is to say or rather to point out the fact that for its own reasons the universe manufactures actors who are inherently cool or hard-assed or sexy as hell or whatever a given film might happen to require but Marshall was either unwilling or unable to recruit appropriate talent for Doomsday.

 

For instance, in the kind of England’s in deep shit filmic emergency situation that calls for the likes of a Vinnie Jones, Doomsday gives us Adrian Lester. He’s a fine actor but when cannibal punk rocker asses need to be kicked to save London from an apocalyptic virus believe you me it is time to leave him behind at a nice comfy desk in a nice comfy office and get Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson suited up in mildly futurist combat armor to save the day or  rather to watch their tough as  a six-inch  heel  through a broken heart one-eyed Major’s ass as she saves the day. Which brings me to a whole other casting misstep.  I am no Rhona Mitra hater, but she is just as out of place in this situation as Lester.  The film literally calls for “Snake” Plissken’s illegitimate daughter  and we get  a former Boston Legal associate and try as she might ,  she just isn’t up to the task. [It's the kind of assignment actresses like Michelle Rodriguez and Asia Argento were built for]. Still Marshall’s and Doomsday’s hearts are in the right place even if its stars aren’t and it didn’t exactly bore me.  So if you’re suffering through a bout of insomnia and find yourself shuffling the ole DVD changer through Escape From New York then the Road Warrior  then … [you get the picture] there are probably worse ways to cap off a night  than watching Rhona Mitra duke it out with a  stage diving  cannibal who insists on keeping his decapitated girlfriend around for a climactic car chase.

Honestly, what more can I say?