Doom (15) (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Doom (15)

There is a time and a place for computer and video games, and respectfully, it's not on the big screen.

From far distant memories of Super Mario Bros and Streetfighter (with the scintillating double act of Jean Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue) to more recent aberrations - Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Resident Evil - someone should call game over on this fruitless cross-fertilisation of the two entertainment forms. Doom is a case in point.

Directed with furious abandon by Andrzej Bartkowiak, whose resume includes Exit Wounds with Steven Seagal and Cradle 2 The Grave with Jet Li, this heavily armed action-horror is as loud as it is brainless.

Clint Mansell's thunderous score rattles the fillings in your head, in between the deafening blitzkrieg of explosions, roars and blood-curdling screams.

While the soundtrack bludgeons you into submission, screenwriters David Callaham and Wesley Strick use the basic storyline of the game as a framework for frenetic, special effects-laden set pieces and macho posturing from the cardboard cutout characters.

Director Bartkowiak pays tribute to Doom's pixellated origins by stylising one of the climactic action sequences like the game: first person perspective, a computer generated gun swaying at the bottom of the screen as various slobbering nasties come haring out of the darkness. You could almost be watching a two-minute demo for the latest instalment of the videogame.

The ensemble cast struggles to be heard above the din. Most fall victim to the film's seemingly endless supply of deformed, carnivorous predators - it's the least the characters deserve.

When officials lose contact with scientists working at the Olduvai Research Facility on Mars, a level five quarantine is imposed, preventing anyone, or anything from leaving the facility.

Hardened marines from the Rapid Response Tactical Squad (RRTS) venture through the portal connecting Earth and Mars, armed to the teeth and itching for a fight. Sarge (The Rock) and his highly trained men come face to face with hideous mutants, far beyond their most twisted nightmares.

Cutting a swathe through the carnivorous beasties, the troops hunt down a zoo of bloodthirsty creatures, using every hi-tech weapon at their disposal.

One of the soldiers, John Grimm (Urban), also has to look out for his sister Samantha (Pike), a scientist who has a knack for finding trouble.

Doom succinctly sums up the experience of enduring Bartkowiak's film - a muscle-bound behemoth pumped full of steroids, that lurches and lumbers from one crash, bang, wallop to the next.

High calibre actors like Urban, Pike and Ben Daniels, who plays ill-fated soldier Goat, are wasted.

When Dexter Fletcher's paraplegic communications officer Pinky whimpers, "There's something behind me, isn't there?" I barely resisted the urge to shout back "Your best days".

3/10

By Stephen Webb

Doom

Starring: The Rock, Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike

Director: Andrzej Bartkowiak

Certificate 15, 104 mins