Doom and Doomer

If you see just one movie about a rough and ready space SWAT team despatched to investigate something gone horribly wrong at a outer-space facility possibly involving genetic experiments this year, make sure it's DOOM. As ever this classic conceit is fresh and original and this offering provides a crisp new take. And we really have to ask, given the slew in the 90s of such well-crafted and well-received releases as Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, why on earth has it taken Hollywood so long to make more movies based on computer games?

The Rock looks like a demented Nasser Hussain -- possibly one who's been told he has to tour Zimbabwe again. Here he puts in his most convincing performance since 2004's Walking Tall, which was critically acclaimed, or at least acclaimed with criticism (What the hell did you rent that for?) Make no mistake though -- this man's eyeballs can act. Their dynamic screen presence alone more than makes up for any supposed inadequacies in The Rock's other thespian credentials. How Brendan Gleeson somehow fluked the part of Professor 'Mad Eye' Moody in Harry Potter is anyone's guess. The Rock for goodness' sake has not one Mad Eye but two! -- either of which would have excelled in the role. Perhaps he was deemed to be over qualified?

This seems as good a time as any to lament the paucity of pro-wrestlers in major cinematic roles. Surely anyone who has seen WWF or WCW knows that these men are some of the finest actors of our generation. Yet if they continue to be overlooked as at present, a vast body (literally) of talent may never make the transition from the canvas floor to the silver screen at all. That would be a great loss.

Karl Urban's portrayal of the brooding Reaper meanwhile demonstrates how his masterclass in moral fortitude and conflicted loyalty as Eomer in The Two Towers was clearly a stepping stone to this similar but much fuller role, possessing mythic stature and an elemental resonance far surpassing anything within the limited creative powers of that hack Tolkien.

The skilful handling by the director of some of the story's trickier points is also worthy of note. For example the fact that of the eighty or so scientists and civilians (including children) the team has been sent to rescue they fail to save a single one of them from being mutilated, eaten and/or turned into zombies -- could potentially be problematic. However this difficult issue is brilliantly resolved by having the viewer deeply and genuinely not care about them. Furthermore the inevitable but often unconvincing sciencey explanation bit in this case has been thoroughly researched and is startlingly believable (something about chromosomes or something). Other questions are really too straightforward to warrant serious response -- we know that scientists are a bit funny and not like the rest of us, so naturally they would build their research facility with mazes of dark corridors, sewers and seemingly vast complexes with only one small airlock in or out. Indeed I am embarrassed to even have mentioned it.

Let us not however forget the essential humanity of this film, which for this viewer was embodied in the moment near the end when one creature about to be blown up by a proximity mine in the final second realises his plight and performs a comedy double take. In that instant, this vile corruption, facing his imminent transport to that Undiscovered Country to which we all of woman born or otherwise created in a lab by accident must someday go, becomes as frightened and vulnerable as a little child.

Finally, great credit must go to the writers and the production team for their masterful use of cliché throughout. Everything -- every line, reaction, pause, fake shock, real shock, discovery of the truth of what-the-hell's-really-been-going-on-around-here-anyway to final denouement is so well observed and executed that it is difficult to be sure that this isn't a film we've seen already. Even the noble tradition established in the Alien/Predator franchises of having a black crewmember ill advisedly take on the monster in unarmed combat mano a monstro is reprised to good and welcome effect. To create a piece so artful that it can slip so easily, indeed almost unnoticed into its viewer's consciousness, must surely be the work of a master filmmaker.