Doom (2005)

The (soon to be space) marine squad of Sarge (The Rock), consisting of people will charming nick names like Duke (Razaaq Adoti), Destroyer (Deobia Oparei) and Goat (Ben Daniels), are sent to the Mars science base on a search and destroy mission. You see, something horrible has happened in the genetics lab there, and now hungry things are around you probably wouldn’t want to get back to Earth, nor to the main part of the Mars base.

Odd man out in Sarge’s team is Reaper (Karl Urban), who is basically an intellectual – at least in comparison -l who gave up on these pursuits because of the expected family trauma and is slumming with the psychopaths now. Reaper’s not too happy his estranged sister Samantha (Rosamund Pike) is coming with the group to rescue some research material, but if you think this isn’t the kind of movie that’ll end with a nice bit of family reunion, you’ve never seen a film before.

Of course, before new peace between siblings the gods have put a bunch of genetic mutations that need killing, and the revelation of the fact that mindlessly following orders leads to evil. Go figure.

I know, by all rights, I should be quite set against Andrzej Bartkowiak’s adaptation of First Person Shooter godfather Doom but I do have a heart for Aliens lite movies about shooty guys and monsters running through dark corridors. And that, if you ask yourself this highly important question, is exactly the sort of movie this is.

It’s a bit of a disappointment that Doom keeps away from the insane hell parts of the game series’ basic plot and replaces it with the usual dumb and careless experiments with alien DNA (oh, spoiler), as is the related fact that the more beloved monsters from the game make cameo appearances and most of the monsters our protagonists spend their time fighting are of the usual infected and alien suits type. However, it’s pretty clear something more lavish just wasn’t in the budget, and the film does do its best with the things it can afford, resulting in many a tight action scene, lots of shouting, and a smidgen of blood and goo.

If I say it’s all in good fun, I’m probably again sounding like I’m damning with faint praise, but Doom really is a fine bit of corridor shooter (oh, hi, Doom 3 meet Doom). It’s well paced, and using the genre typical character archetypes well. You wouldn’t exactly call the characters three-dimensional. or the treatment of their types subversive, but they do work well in the context of the film they are in. The script even surprises once or twice by being slightly more clever than strictly necessary. First when it slowly shifts its bad ass protagonist from Sarge to Reaper (a trick that probably worked even better in 2005 when the audience wasn’t used to Karl Urban as a leading man), and a second time when it actually starts to argue that, you know, shooting and explosions is fun and all, but from time to time you should probably think through the ethics of what you’re doing; which isn’t a thing you’d expect to find in this sort of shoot ‘em up film, and is even integrated into the plot well enough it actually works.

I also can’t help but feel sympathetic towards a first person shooter adaptation that includes a perfectly silly and cheesy, yet also intensely loveable, first person shooter sequence; I’m pretty sure Paul W.S. Anderson was quite put out when he saw Doom and realized he could have used over-the-shoulder cam in one of his Resident Evil films (which might explain a certain backwards slow motion scene in one of his RE films as a very particular kind of overcompensation). There’s really something irresistible about a film that uses that sort of scene without really breaking its perfectly straight (if one-liner lined) face for me.

Plus, the violence is fun, fast, and plenty, leaving Doom a much more entertaining piece of cinematic art than I’d been led to believe.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,czech movies,german movies,british movies,reviews,action,sf,horror,andrzej bartjowiak,karl urban,the rock,rosamund pike

In short: Dredd (2012)

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban), particularly frightful member of a dystopian police force of judge/jury/executioner types in an equally dystopian future, has just been saddled with telepathic Judge candidate Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) when the pair is locked into a (dystopian) slum skyscraper. They have to fight their way out or up through the gang of a certain Ma-Ma (Lena Heady), a remarkably psychopathic woman even in a time and place full of violent psychopaths. Parallels to The Raid - Redemption are without a doubt not based on plagiarism but the set-up being ideal for cost-conscious, tight action filmmaking.

After the horrible Stallone abomination, I did not dare hope for a decent adaptation of the long running British comic strip, especially after a trailer that screamed "crap action movie full of shitty one-liners". But sometimes, the universe is gracious, and so Pete Travis's version of the adventures of everyone's favourite fascist turns out to be a pretty darn great bit of the old ultra-violence, with some detours into entertaining surrealism, mostly courtesy of Anderson's telepathic abilities and a drug named Slo-Mo. Personally, I'd have wished for a film that underplays the source's SF parts a little less, and integrates a bit more of the typical sledgehammer satire (which in the case of the 2000AD classic may involve actual sledgehammers). As it stands, I'm not really sure the film understands that its hero is a murderous fascist monster, and that this might be something of a problem.

However, Dredd is a very effective action movie that not only does the blood and the explosions well but also gives age-old action movie tropes - especially when it comes to Olivia Thirlby's pre-Judge Anderson - some mildly clever twists and turns.

The film is also wise enough to not treat its titular hero (as embodied by Karl Urban's chin) as an actual human being with normal human emotions and - yuck - a character arc. It's somewhat ironic to praise a film for not turning its main character into a human being, but doing Dredd right predominantly means resisting the temptation to give him a Hollywood character arc and a "funny" sidekick. Anderson, being a woman in an action movie and all, is the one allowed to have feelings, but, much to my surprise, Alex Garland's script does put genuine effort into not stepping into the worst action movie cliché crap with her, which pays off well.

There's also some very effective acting by Thirlby, Urban's chin (the theoretically ridiculous helmet does in practice work for him and it), and Lena Heady who has slowly turned into a rather impressive actress of female big bads suffering from various degrees of insanity thanks to an ability to chew exactly as much scenery as any given scene can afford or slip into a more naturalistic acting style on a moment's notice.

It's all good, so Dredd's comparative lack of commercial success puzzles me quite a bit.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,in short,sf,action,pete travis,karl urban,olivia thirlby,lena heady

Three Films Make A Post: Beyond the black mouth of the cursed cave lurk the unfleshed...

YellowBrickRoad (2010): This turned out to be a real exercise in frustration for me. Thematically and conceptually, this could and should be a major milestone in indie horror that goes for the truly weird instead of the usual generic stuff. In practice, the potential effect is ruined by directorial decisions that seem wrong-headed and self-sabotaging, bland photography, and acting that can go from decent to horrible in the span of a single scene (I dare you to watch the first character death without laughing).

Priest (2011): Speaking of exercises in frustration, Scott Stewart's manhwa-based Priest is even worse than YellowBrickRoad, because, given that Stewart does actually have a bit of experience in his job, and a budget high enough to finance an indie director's entire filmography at his disposal, there's just no excuse for how crap this turned out to be. You'd think there's not much that could be done to keep a vampire SF western from being at least a bit diverting, but Stewart and scriptwriter Cory Goodman know how to ruin a perfectly fine set-up: just ignore everything that might be entertaining or interesting to watch and only go for full-on bad action movie clichés and total lack of drama or believable human emotion in every single second. There's bathos and mumbling about faith and stuff, sure, but this is one of those films that believes that it's enough to go through the motions of the same tired old crap to produce an emotional reaction in one's audience.

The action scenes are boringly staged, the film's look designed to show as little of what looks like it might be rather inventive steam-punky production design as possible, and nobody ever turns on the fucking lights. Colour desaturation (the world, it turns out, is mildly brown) and disinterested acting (not even Karl Urban seems to make an effort) are obviously a given. So it's pretty much like Stewart's execrable Legion all over again.

Sexton Blake and the Hooded Terror (1938): This is the third and last of the three films about the British pulp detective where the character was played by actor George Curzon, and the only of the three I've seen. It's a British programmer by numbers - light on substance, with a bit too much "comic" relief but entertaining enough for what it is. There's also Tod Slaughter doing his usual sleazy mugging.

Only real point of interest is how bad a hero this incarnation of Blake is: he's the kind of guy who blubbers out confidential information in public, nearly burns evidence, bumbles and stumbles mindlessly into danger only to be saved by chance or a competent woman (Greta Gynt) he still goes on to patronize, and leaves the final hunt for the film's criminal mastermind to the police because he prefers to have dinner with his lady friend. Frankly, he's more than just a bit embarrassing. Was the literary Sexton Blake as bad? Is this conscious deconstruction? I certainly don't know.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,british movies,scott stewart,karl urban,george curzon,greta gynt,tod slaughter,horror,mystery,pulp,in short