CaptainMarvel

I enjoyed it. High art, it's not, but it was entertaining from start to finish.

Patman

If you go into this film with the notion of seeing the 3 installment of the recently revival attempt of Grindhouse films, Doomsday kinda works with such a sensibility. We are treated to a mishmash of action-thrillers from the past 40 years or so (fans will have fun identifying them all on DVD later, I suspect), and the narrative scope doesn't pretend to be anything more than it seems on the surface. There are duty-bound protagonists, and over-the-top insane characters for antagonists, with very little shades of grey in between them. Rhona Mitra is game for a B-movie heroine, and her supporting cast is sufficient (though Bob Hoskins' appearance was a surprise, and he provided a bit of grit and gravitas in spots). The guy who played Saul cracked me up, loved his unbridled lack of filters when reacting to situations gone awry.

Director Neil Marshall throws in all sorts of homages, some work, some don't, but the film itself is so tonally awkward as it goes from oneset piece to the next set piece in an attempt to carry forward the plot. But even with such deficiencies in the screenplay, there is quite a bit of fun with all the carnage, violence and action throughout the film. The pacing is actually not too bad, and the 3rd act had me rolling in spots, just good ol' fashion fun action sequences (a la Road Warrior) during the big chase scene.

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.

mrglass

I highly enjoyed it. I had to drag my wife along who really didn't want to see it, but she gave it a thumbs up at the end.

to "The Warriors" homage thrown in there, as well.

Brack

$1.7m opening day. nice.

FantasticVSDoom

Not what I was expecting to be honest with you... Not bad for a Saturday matinee with no expectations. My biggest issue was that it was all over the place. But the action and violence was there and a good nod to a lot of the cheesy action genres of the '80s.

MartinBlank

The whole time watching it I thought the chick was Kate Beckinsale...I'm not that stupid, right? They do look the same, don't they?!

Brack

there's some similarity, but I think it's her hair and dress, which is almost identical to Beckinsale in Underworld.

Cellar Door

It was fun. Very silly and stupid, but fun. I didn't know that Adrian Lester was going to be in it, so that was a bonus (I'm a fan of his from Hu$tle). Rhona Mitra was good--I've always liked her and I hope she'll do more action movies. Sol was too cartoonish to be very scary. I liked his girlfriend, but they killed her off too soon. Malcolm McDowell was wasted--I thought he was going to wind up being the big threat, but he was on and off the screen very quickly.
I didn't quite like the end. So Rhona Mitra's character goes back to be the leader of the cannibals? WTF?!
But the pace was quick and there were some cool fights and chase scenes, so I was entertained. And they certainly didn't shy away from the gore, did they?

lopper

Hey, thanks for the spoilers! AWESOME!!!!

Ralph Jenkins

So, another "grindhouse" film opens around Easter and bombs. This felt like it should've been a summer movie to me, but maybe they were afraid of all the competition in the summer.

I didn't realize it was so close to Easter until the bunny scene came up.

Eric D.

I guess Marshall will have to go back to doing smaller, independent films now that this one bombed.

onebyone

Agreed. If I want to judge movies on entertainment value alone, this one would get my highest rating for sure. It was all fun, all the time.

Cannot wait for the DVD and now thanks to that terrible box office (ouch) I guess that I wont have to wait too long.

SuckaMC

We can hope that good word of mouth gives this some legs. I think it deserves it.. This was one of those rare movies where about 40 minutes into this I thought to myself, "I wish this movie was like 4 hours long".

Rammsteinfan

Saw it last night and it was a blast! Definintely getting this on DVD. It made about $5 mil its first 3 days. It cost $19 mil to make so im sure it will make a profit in the long run. This movie was definitely for fans of the genre.

Bluelitespecial

Why is everyone here saying it bombed already, for one it wasn't shown on a lot of theaters, If it sticks around for a few weeks it should make its budget back, it will probably do well overseas, then cash in on dvd.

Rammsteinfan

Looks like $4.9 is the actual haul. 1/4 its budget so far in 3 days. I hope the DVD is packed w/ extras or more unrated content. I could use some more crazy Punk smashing, burning, cannibalism.

Trevor

Mindless, yes. Fun, no.

I love mindless fun, thought Planet Terror was great and own many "B" movies. But I could not get into this film at all. Worst movie of the year so far for me.

Julie Walker

I saw this,this afternoon with my dad and it was a blast! This movie was wicked fun and just off the charts!

And man was this violent and gruesome! People that whine about the MPAA don't know how good they have it today! All that graphic material would have been sliced out in choppy fashion 'back in the day'.

It's up there with Rambo as the most violent/graphic R rated film of the year.


So far Neil Marshall is three for three with me! So I'll be looking forward to his next project.

Indy Jones Fan

I was hangin' with it until they switched to the medieval storyline. Then I lost all interest. I did really like Rhona Mitra though. She was very good as the butt-kicking heroine. Just as a point of reference, since it was mentioned earlier, I loved every minute of Planet Terror but taken as a whole Doomsday didn't work for me. Two thumbs down.

SuckaMC

curious to see how this does this weekend. Hopefully well.

Matthew Chmiel

This movie was the fucking tits.

To be honest, it's rare to see a movie that's over 100 minutes long and have it be firing on all cylinders throughout the entire duration. For that, this film easily ranks as my favorite film of the year so far.

As others have mentioned, Marshall is so far three for three. I also loved the fact that actors from his past two films made appearances here...

Trevor

I thought I was becoming more in tune with the forum here, and was positive that your reactions to this film would be violently negative. I can't believe anyone could like this film.

Guess I don't know you yet.

I really enjoyed Marshall's other two films by the way, didn't realize he had done this one until coming to this thread. I actually went into this movie completely blind, had never seen a trailer or heard a word about it.

Matthew Chmiel

I compare Doomsday to last year's Grindhouse. Whereas Grindhouse was a complete homage to seventies exploitation filmmaking, Doomsday does the same for the eighties. On a side note, I also feel Marshall was going for the same tone he did with Dog Soldiers just with more raised stakes and intensified violence/gore.

Any film that can mix 28 Days Later, Escape From New York, Excalibur, Knightriders, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, and The Warriors (amongst others) AND puts it on par with those films easily has to get some recognition by me.

But I still stick by the fact that Funny Games and Diary of the Dead are the worst films I've seen so far this year. Maybe I liked Doomsday more because it didn't try to slap me over the head with (awful and terrible) social commentary.

Trevor

Just to be thorough, I was using the "you" as plural and referring to the whole forum in my post. You probably knew that Matthew, but I just wanted to be sure. Good reply, but I disagree with a few points.

Grindhouse was a homage to the 70's explotation films, but it aped them in general terms, not specific movies. And even if I'm wrong and it referenced specific movies, very few people know those specific movies, we just know the general idea of the genre.

Doomsday referenced/copied specific well known movies, classics even. But it did it extremely badly, at least in my opinion.

demonio

Us fellers at DEADPIT Radio did an on the Road video review, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN_-63gN39E