Seeing a bad movie is one thing; seeing a bad movie by a talented filmmaker is another thing altogether. Usually the first thought I have after witnessing a disappointment from someone I've had faith in is: why? Why did you feel like you had to make this movie? What was so important about it to you? Please tell me this is not your life's work, that one project you've been building up to, the one you hope will "define" who you are as a filmmaker and an artist. I tend to have a great deal of tolerance for movies made by someone I like, even if it is so bad I want to cover my eyes. I'll always give them the benefit of the doubt until the screen fades to black.I was intrigued from the beginning with Doomsday, only because it was coming from Neil Marshall, who helmed the splendid genre picture Dog Soldiers and the creepy and sometimes downright terrifying The Descent. He's one of the more promising writer/directors around, having with just two pictures established himself as a vivid eye when it comes to crafting genre pieces. It can be the hardest type of movie to get right since the filmmaker always runs the risk of their work coming off as too cheesy, too absurd, or just plain dumb. I understand that in a genre movie, dumb is often the point, but there does need to be a limit. Once the audience begins to feel as scatterbrained as the movie they're watching, problems arise.
So, Marshall was two for two, and I was anticipating the streak to continue. I wasn't crazy about the marketing, but I let my weariness pass. Then came the decision not to screen the movie for critics, which brought my worries back, but again, I pushed them away in hopes that maybe the studio was being a little too cautious. Trying to keep a positive mindset is often a good way to set yourself up for disappointment, as more often then not when you fear a movie is going to be bad, most of the time it is.
My false hopes certainly did not help Doomsday in the long run, but I'll be damned if it didn't have me fooled for about forty-five minutes. The movie opens with a deadly virus wiping out the population of modern day England. There are, without question, numerous shots of people being gunned down by the military while trying to escape, only to be followed up by voice overs showing maps of the damage and the wall that was built in order to separate the infected from the healthy. These early scenes, which are set to a synthesizer score, reminded me of a darker, modern day Escape From New York. The intention that Marshall was obviously aiming to make his own version of John Carpenter's classic is confirmed when the hero is introduced. Her name, Eden Sinclair (Rhona Mitra), may not sound quite as cool as Snake Plissken, but she does sport the signature eye patch and consistently asks for a smoke. Oh yeah, and it takes place in the future.
Instead of rescuing the president, Eden's mission is to lead a team over the wall in hopes they can find a cure for the virus. Simple enough, so it seems, the main issue being that the survivors who dodged the virus live as savages. At this point, Doomsday slowly starts to shift gears, moving out of Carpenter territory and into Mad Max (particularly The Road Warrior) territory. Even then, I was still with the picture, for combining elements from different genre movies isn't a sin. I must confess I enjoyed the first ridiculous attack sequence set in a hospital, and even got a kick out of the bizarre rally where the tribe of survivors prepare to feast on one of Eden's soldiers (I could have done without the cornball addition of a Fine Young Cannibals tune. Oh, the irony!).
Marshall and his Descent cinematographer, Sam McCurdy, stage some winning compositions during the first section, my favorite being when a flare is fired so Eden and the team can see their surroundings. McCurdy also makes nice use of lighting during a train escape. What's strange about the picture is how everything changes gears at the same time. Once Eden and her crew exit the train and wander through the woods, it's like we've entered a completely different movie, and not for the better. The retro score becomes overblown and bombastic, the action, while already frenetic, becomes even more confusing, and the welcome campy nature of the movie disappears.
It's as if Marshall had too much he wanted to accomplish and wasn't really sure how to construct his material into something sturdy. Or maybe he got carried away when it came to writing the movie's outrageous action sequences and forgot that he needed to include at least one solid plot development to hang them on. Eventually, it gets to the point where all the speeches intended on pushing the story forward are screeching the movie to a painful halt, mainly because the fear starts to arise that Doomsday might be taking itself seriously. I don't think it is; at least, that's the way I felt once the movie's climatic chase scene began. The whole sequence, which involves the heroes being pursued on a highway by the nutty survivors in their homemade vehicles, is edited at such a rapid speed there isn't a single moment the viewer can tell what the bloody hell is happening.
When the director and the studio execs screen the final version of their movie, how could either side see the benefit to having so many cuts during an action scene? Do they honestly believe it's exciting for an audience to get a headache from the angle changing every five seconds? And what's up with so many filmmakers now feeling like they have to shoot action close up? I can't answer for them, but I'm of the mentality that I like to actually see what's going on. It's not too encouraging when you can't tell who's hitting who, and it's even worse when you can't tell who won until the camera finally stops moving.
It seems like the bigger budget was too much for Marshall to handle. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he was given the deal before he started writing the script, giving him an opportunity to go for broke and not waste a penny of the proposed budget. He started out small scale, but as he kept reminding himself how much money he was going to have, his ambitions got bigger and bigger until it became about how much spectacle was going to be onscreen. I'd like to think that's what happened. It's true that every good filmmaker makes a bad movie; it's just always a tragedy to see a movie start with so much potential and go down the tube with the snap of the fingers.
I don't imagine John Carpenter or George Miller (Mad Max) would enjoy Doomsday very much. Carpenter's picture was about subtlety, after all, and his hero had a lot more appeal. Not to say that Rhona Mitra isn't a pleasure to look at, but as a character, there's nothing very entertaining about the way she's drawn. As for the subtlety part...let's just say that's a word this movie could never comprehend. All three of the Mad Max pictures were as insane and occasionally as violent as this one. Instead of pushing the violence too far, Miller focused on inventing an original world out of a setting consisting of nothing but dirt. Plus, his action, while kinetic, was filmed with a trained eye; he wanted us to get a rush out of what we were seeing. All of Marshall's action is overkill, and worse, he feels like every gory detail must be shown. For instance, when a tank runs over a cow, there must be a shot displaying the smooshed carcass. Necessary? Not in the least.
I often find gore to be effective or even fun in the right context, meaning I'm not generally one to complain about it. There's comes a point, though, when its excessiveness is no longer a worthy exposition, and Doomsday reaches that point early on. Marshall feels the need to show every single blood spurting shot he can, and it comes off as a joke at first. But once you've seen it fifteen times, it goes from amusing to childish. How could Marshall be so careless? Did he forget what made Dog Soldiers and The Descent work in the first place? Doomsday represents the first disappointment of 2008. What should have been a building block on a newly enthusiastic career instead stands as not just a step down, but a step back towards the beginning.
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Copyright, Hell and Beyond, 2008
1 comment:
oh man
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