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Doomsday (2008) Unrated version - some minor SPOILERS will occur, no major ones ..

(http://tf.org/images/covers/tf.org-Doomsday-free2008.jpg)

Anywho ... have you seen this?

You know for all of it's many, many, many flaws this was a good movie. Think 'Mad Max' meets 'Braveheart' meets 'Escape from NY' meets 'Resident Evil' ... ok got that, good. You have 'Doomsday'.

Off in the near future a virus called the Reaper Virus infects Scotland, there is no cure and it kills everyone. So in good Roman fashion the Brits wall off Scotland right alone Hadrian's Wall and fagitaboutit. A small girl is places on a military helicopter to escape and her mother is left behind, her eye is lost prior to the evac in the riots. So years, nay a couple of decades pass and she's all grown up, p**sed off  and full of hate working for the government with a cool removable bionic eye, fully equipped with remote control.
So suddenly the virus is back this time in London and the government spy satellites see life in Scotland, somehow they must have found a cure and they want it. So they assemble a team of well trained military specialist to go to the walled off Scotland to find a cure, led by ... you guess it RoboEye girl. So before they go, they're told there is/was a top notch doctor there that must have developed a cure and they need to find him to find the cure ... so off they go. Secret info is passed around, you get to see it, don't you feel special.

Skip over a few boring bits and slick as snot their in downtown Edinburgh and man doesn't the place need tiding up a bit. Well they go to the lab to find the Doc and wouldn't you know it he's not there, but a few 100 unfriendly locals are, led by the evil Sol who looks a lot like the lead singer from Midnight Oil with a blond Mohawk. See all the bad people are very punked out and cannibalistic. Well chases the battle erupt and a few of the solders are captures to be eaten, but not before they pass out the paper plates ... never mind the fact it's been nearly 30 years since anything was shipped into or made in Scotland, they still have fresh papers plate ... but just for show as they attack the cooked corpse and eat like animals. Provided your not  cute little bunny, but that was earlier and you'll have to see the movie to know what I'm talking about. Well anyway it would seem that not only do you have paper plates, you can also run a PA system and stadium lighting off a car battery ... must have been a Interstate battery to hold a charge for 30 years, while be used. Ok be that as it may, lead roboeye girl, aka Maj. Eden Sinclair is captured and not having a good day at all, not even a little. While she is locked up, the paper plate tossing, car battery using, hot dancing girls that can still shave their legs and armpits in a post apocalyptic viral world crowd are having fairly well mannered party for hooligans that are getting ready to eat some guy, while rock soundtrack play.

Cut away back to the cell and guess who is getting free ... yep Maj Babe and her handy roboeye. More killing, more chasing, then more killing and a little more chasing and they're free, but not before she frees a girl from prison who can help ... there is always somebody else you can free that will help and knows the ropes, what luck there's one here too.

So off they go to escape from the punk rock hair dyed clean shaven bad guys just to run into seeming nice people that are bad too, hell they're everywhere. So they go look for the doctor to find the cure ... but a short cut leads them through an old government underground storage complex that will come in handy later.

Meanwhile back in London the Prime Minster is going to have to close off part of London to contain the virus, this is not good. Marshall Law, panic, riots this is going to be Scotland all over again ... unless that damn cure is found. Oh but the PM's evil aid has a plan to solve to over population poverty problem ... let them die! And he is power hungry too, the power behind the man.

So will they find the cure? Is there a cure?
What will become of the Prime Minster and his evil aid?
Well London survive? Where the hell is the Queen?
Well our hero's escape or will they forever be trapped in the untamed world that once was Scotland?

To find out to answer to these and much, much more ... watch the movie.

I'm giving it 4 out of 5

I'm overlooking the glaring errors, many I didn't list. Like where the hell did they get gas? It's goes bad in storage in a couple of years. Do tell me they made it, they can't grow food, pretty sure they're not refining it. And where did the purple hair dye come from? Don't tell me 30 years in the stores they still have some around ... who makes their cloths? Anyway ignore all of that, it's a good solid entertaining movie that is worth adding to any collection I believe.

 :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:


edit: clarity to correct a 2AM post.

I have seen it, Cheeze, it's pretty good ~ made in Cape Town, by the way.

One thing that makes me  :teddyr: is seeing all the recognizable Cape Town landmarks in the film: I caught myself thinking "Man that area has gone to the dogs!" and then I realize that it is a movie set dressed by Neill Marshall and company.  :teddyr:

Sounds like a pretty good movie, I'll have to check it out some time.

Hey Trevor, you're upside down.  Just thought you might wanna know  :teddyr:

[trevor bangs head on the underside of the desk] Ouchies! :twirl:

Thanks Jack: I flipped the picture because I thought it would give me a better view of the world and give me an early warning of when my underpants have reached or passed their sell by date.  :buggedout: :buggedout:

I thought maybe it was because you're (sort of) on the other side of the planet, so when viewed from America, you're upside down.  But I've never been to good with the theoretical stuff  :teddyr:

I saw it last week, and had a ball with it. It's got zero originality, and the different acts seem taken from completely different movies, but it's energetic, well crafted and tons of fun.

The "concert" scene will be always stuck in my mind, as well as how cute Rhona Mitra looks in a tank top.

I saw this in theaters and real liked it. It was panned by critics which I could care less. It was just a bunch of different movies like Escape From New York, Road Warrior and other post-apocalyptic flims all roled into one with a big budget. Great stuff.

I was wanting to at least rent this at some point as I'm a big fan of director Neil Marshal's previous 2 films Dog Soldiers and (especially) The Descent.

The ads for it didn't do anything for me but a friend of mine is getting it in on Netflix tomorrow so I'll get to see it this weekend at some point.

Flawed but Fun and starring Rhona Mitra :hot: She has the presence to become a good action hero. She's kinda a female Snake Plissken in this one. A little.I think she is starring in the next UnderWorld movie.

I also thought about The Road Warrior and Escape From New York while watching this the other night.
She is a female snake!
Even the music in the beggining reminded me of the music from a John Carpenter movie.
I really enjoyed it a lot and will be putting it in my dvd collection. :drink:

I thought this was fantastic.  There's a fine line between shameless ripoff and tounge-in-cheek homage and DOOMSDAY finds a way to stay on the positive side of that line.  Even better is it's refusal to back away from it's exploitation potential.  They even blow apart a friggin rabbit! 

To say it's influenced by ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is an understatement.  From the prologue with it's computerized "wall map" to the social jabs to the whole flow of the film itself, Marshall's film just oozes Plissken.  The key to it all, though, is that everyone in the production is in on the joke.  The director knew it, the actors knew it...hell, even the composer Tyler Bates knew it. 

While it seem like par for the course with societies that collapse into a neo-feudalism to adopt all sorts of ROAD WARRIOR tropes, regular commuting on the interstate around here makes me think that's less a lazy cinematic convention and more a subconscious understanding.  :buggedout:

This is the film guys like Sergio Martino and Enzo Castellari(along with all the other spaghetti emulators)could only dream of making.  An post-apocalyptic exploitation film with a decent budget and some real exposure.

Rhona Mitra was fabulous, just enough deadpan without going into parody territory.  Honestly though, I do think she's a tad too skinny nowadays.  Her physique in the Christopher Lambert patience-tester BEOWULF always felt perfect to me.  It's always nice to see Sean Pertwee too.  Something about his voice and natural delivery that automatically gives his roles a third dimension. 

And is it me or is Malcolm McDowell the hardest working man in genre films today?  I picture him going home after each film shoot and looking at the picture of John Carradine on his mirror and whispering "That's one more!"  :wink:

Yeah I loved it too. Marshall looks to have a great future in my opinion as I feel he keeps getting a little better each time. This one has a bit of The Warriors in in too, with the big bbq scene as well as all those other movies mentioned. I can see me watching this one many times.  :thumbup:

*** out of ****.

Fun exploitation trash.

i was really surprised- i'd heard nothing but bad things about this movie from people who'd seen it in theaters, but when it first came to dvd a month or so ago, the four copies we got at my store flew out the door IMMEDIATELY.

So let me get this straight:  John Carpenter homages sewn together with a paper-thin plot = good movie?

Yes, but only if done with the budget and the adequate talent.

or maybe they just make the sort of pallatable, accessible movie that applies to "the masses"...

I watched it the other night on DVD with the commentary subtitles on (I wish more movies had those BTW). Marshall namechecks the various movies and directors he is "paying tribute" to. Two characters are names "Miller" and "Carpenter" for a reason. Marshall also names The Warriors in the commetary as one of the films that he was emulating here. Mostly in the punk city scenes. If you look in the crowd during the cannibalism party/ritual there is a Basball Fury in the crowd. Marshall also says he wanted to find the woman DJ from The Warriors for Sol's intro. And even suggests he had thought about a certain actor from that film for the Kane role.

I enjoyed it for the popcorn action fluff it was. Nothing original going on here, which was fine, I needed pure entertainment. I was enjoying myself to not question the realism of the situation. Some good actors getting a paycheck for adding some weight to standard roles, and gore that was more extreme/exploitive than a typical movie but but still fit. I saw Death Race the day after I saw this, I wish I had caught this in the theater instead, even if it wasn't the unrated version. This film managed to get right all the things DR got wrong as far as being an entertaining trashy movie.

Marshall is obviously talented, and I enjoyed the film, I just hope he can grow as a film maker and find his own style rather than just aping his influences always.

I thought of Trevor when watching this since Marshall mentions how much of the film was shot in SA. The SA actress playing Viper was a hottie as well, apparently a kickboxing champ there. There was an odd disclaimer in the end credits something to do with some SA guild or trade union wrking with the film but not endorsing or condoning it's content? Is this a standard disclaimer, Trevor, or unique to foriegn production or just certain films? I may put the disc back in before I take it back, look it up and post it here?