If you were in Glasgow on April 3 this year, then we have some alarming
news: you're doomed!
The Scottish city was the epicentre of an outbreak of the deadly Reaper
virus, which ravages the body and leads to liquefaction of the internal
organs.
The Labour government will respond swiftly and decisively - for once -
by constructing a reinforced steel wall with sentry guns along
Scotland's border, separating an entire nation from the rest of the UK.
Sacrifice five million innocent people to safeguard the world.
The repercussions will be horrendous: families torn apart,
military-authorised culling of the infected, and a global shortage of
malt whisky and lovely, buttery shortbread.
So begins the nightmarish scenario of Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic
action romp with echoes of 28 Days Later and, worryingly, Mad Max Beyond
Thunderdome.
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Writer-director Neil Marshall's appetite for on-screen carnage, whetted
in his first two films Dog Soldiers and The Descent, is sated here with
dismemberment and decapitation on a much grander scale, including one
character being flambeed alive then eaten by a carnivorous rabble.
The film begins proper in London 2035.
Prime Minister John Hatcher (Siddig) and his scheming aide Michael
Canaris (O'Hara) summon Department of Domestic Security Chief Bill
Nelson (Hoskins) to an urgent meeting.
The Reaper virus has been detected in the capital. Unless a counteragent
can be found within 48 hours, London will be ground zero for a global
pandemic.
DOOMSDAY (18, 108 mins)
Released: May 9
Thankfully, satellite photographs reveal people alive and well on the
streets of Glasgow. Apparently there are survivors of the virus.
Canaris entreats Nelson to assemble a crack team to cross the wall and
find a cure, starting at the laboratory of scientist Dr Kane (McDowell).
Major Eden Sinclair (Mitra), an evacuee from Glasgow during the initial
outbreak, leads the covert mission, joined by Sergeant Norton (Lester)
and his troops, and doctors Talbot (Pertwee) and Stirling (Morfitt).
"What happens if I don't find anything up there?" Eden asks Canaris.
"Then you needn't bother coming back," he barks.
Doomsday begins promisingly but skitters into the realm of the
ridiculous once Eden and her team encounter the barbaric survivors led
by Sol (Conway) and his punk-rocker heathens.
McDowell's raspy voiceover, dictating Kane's case notes, gives rise to
more unintentional hilarity: "They've begun to feed off each other. It's
medieval out there!"
Mitra's ballsy heroine, who lost an eye in childhood and now uses her
hi-tech falsie as a camera to peer around corners, is emotionally
untouched by her journey into the dead zone, and consequently so are we.
Supporting cast suffer inglorious fates at the hands of Sol or Kane's
disciples, until the climactic car chase that sets every screech of
burning rubber to Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes".
"A one is all that you can score," declares lead singer Holly Johnson.
Marshall's film warrants slight more, but not much.
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