Doom

A truly bold movie adaptation of the first-person-shooter videogame Doom would simply be an hour and a half of … well … first-person shooting. The camera would take the point of view of an anonymous soldier as he blasts his way through various mutants, zombies, and other unfriendly creatures in the catacombs of Mars. There is actually an extended sequence like that in the movie, tipping its hat to its popular source. It’s pretty clever and has a kind of trigger-finger wit. Otherwise, Doom the movie is likely to thrill only those who have been yearning for a Doom movie. Most others will have seen it all before, in superior action-horror films (Aliens, Predator) and not-so-superior ones (Resident Evil).

Scientists on Mars have been diddling around with a 24th chromosome that makes humans superstrong and almost indestructible. The process, though, also functions as a sort of moral litmus test: If you’re predisposed to violence or psychosis, it’ll make you a monster. So the result is a bunch of dead scientists, and a crew of Hollywood-issue Marines are shipped off to Mars to investigate. Character subtlety is out of the question: the only Marine with a full name is John Grimm (Karl Urban), which suits his general mood. The other guys go by names like Goat, Duke, Destroyer, and Sarge (The Rock).

Helmed by Andrzej Bartkowiak, a decent cinematographer (Thirteen Days, The Devil’s Advocate) turned schlock director (Cradle 2 the Grave, Romeo Must Die), the movie streaks by in unscannable short bursts of gunfire. Doom is plenty bloody and violent, though the hyperactive editors (four are credited) make sure you don’t see much of the carnage, in effect doing the MPAA’s censorious work for it. The videogame was (notoriously) much more brutal; the movie is suggestively brutal, offering quick glimpses of torn flesh, spattered blood. In one memorable bit, a tube of a character’s watery brain matter is applied to a monster’s severed tongue to see if there’s a reaction. That sentence has possibly never been typed before, and I suppose I have Doom to thank for it.

The Rock continues to pursue his apparent dream of being a stoic and colorless action hero, without a trace of the humor he’s shown in interviews, in supporting roles, or even in his old wrestling persona. His one tender moment is played opposite an enormous gun, taking trash-movie autoeroticism about as far as it can go. (Regardless, we see it fired only twice.) Usually a director would try to cast eccentrics around a rock like The Rock, but here we only get Karl Urban, here used for his imposing physique and little else. Urban emerges as the film’s closest thing to a hero, but he’s still not very close, playing a hard-boiled soldier who goes on the mission mainly to rescue his scientist sister (Rosamund Pike, who couldn’t act worth a damn in Die Another Day and still can’t). Only Richard Brake, as the sleazy and duplicitous grunt Portman, gives a performance of any interest, and even that’s on the level of caricature.

And what exactly did I expect from a movie based on a shoot-’em-up videogame? Well, there’s no rule that videogame movies have to be idiotic. And there’s no rule that action-horror flicks need be dumb: James Cameron’s Aliens remains the gold standard in a debased subgenre. Doom, however, proceeds as though those were inviolable rules. And except for a moment involving a monkey in an airshaft the script is as humorless as The Rock’s character. Some time ago there was a famous Internet clip of the online game World of Warcraft, in which a player loudly proclaiming himself “Leroy Jenkins” ran heedlessly into a hazardous level and (hilariously) got everyone else killed. Doom could’ve used a Leroy Jenkins.

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