It would be easy to come out swinging on a film like Doom, to write it off as pointless video game trash and hammer away. As it happens, the film really isn’t any good, but I went in genuinely wanting to like it. I’ve been a big fan of the video game series for years, and there was all the potential in the world for this movie to be a solid entry in the sci-fi/horror genre. I doubt anyone walks into a film like Doom expecting high art, just something entertaining to go with their popcorn. This almost fulfills that, but the flaws in this movie are so glaring that it is too easy to be taken out of the film.
And it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the filmmakers. There are some interesting undertones that never really work out. Doom has the feeling of being written on the fly, resulting in a story that feels slapped together. If only a little more time had been given to the script, this might have been ten times better.
The story is simple. A group of Marines is sent to a remote outpost on Mars to defend the people there and recover valuable property. Their main focus is on corporate interests, and the men have only the most vague sense of what their mission is. They are undermanned, and when they start to get picked off one by one by enemies they rarely see, morale drops to almost nothing. The parallels to the situation in Iraq are obvious, but they do not do anything with it. The leader of this bunch, Sarge (The Rock), changes suddenly late in the film, and it seems to come out of nowhere. The characters in Doom do not have arcs as much as they have hard one-hundred-and-eighty degree turns that happen unexpectedly. They do not evolve; they just change when it is convenient.
There are elements to the Doom video game series that are playfully satanic: demons, pentagrams on walls, stuff like that. Most of that has been removed for this film, and the Martian outpost is more a metaphorical hell than a literal one. The creatures they fight are not hellbeasts but mutated human beings. This is a small point, one that will probably only be noticed by gamers, if at all. Even so, there is a religious undercurrent, most obviously in the last shot of John Grimm (Karl Urban) and his sister ascending from the fort. Like the Iraq subtext, the undertones are just present enough to be noticed, while not actually adding anything to the film.
The casting choices are also inconsistent. The Rock is his monosyllabic best as Sarge, a role that once upon a time would have been played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Supposedly The Rock was offered the role of John Grimm, but chose to play Sarge instead because he thought the character was more interesting. I don’t know what draft of the script he was reading, but Sarge really has little to do here. He does not have a lot of dialogue, which might be for the best, and much of his face time involves looking tough. Karl Urban is strong as Grimm, the Marine with the traumatic memories of Mars. Others, though, are woefully miscast, particularly Richard Brake as the wisecracking Portman. This guy looks more like a truck driver or a barfly than a Marine.
The film is not without its moments. The opening scene is one, a bravura opening that the rest of the film just does not live up to. There is also the first person POV sequence, where Grimm goes on a genetically enhanced killing spree. The action mirrors the game so well, you’ll probably wish you playing that rather than watching this. These moments are mere blips in a film that has too many flaws to be overlooked.
Doom is a failure. One wonders what will become of that other game about futuristic Marines in hostile territory, Halo, which should see production sometime soon. It can’t be much worse.
Film Rating: * (out of 5)
