What do you get when you put “Escape from New York”, the second and third installments of the “Mad Max” collection, and any movie that involved a government trying to conceal the fact that they’ve let loose a virus that kills countless humans in it’s spreading? Well apparently you get “DoomsDay” this weekend’s movie in review. Now some months ago, I’ve seen a trailer for this movie, and at first start I thought “Oh, this must be the “Escape From New York” remake I’ve heard about”…wrong! It was DoomsDay! Ok, I’ve seen a couple of similarities to that movie “Road Warrior” in the trailer, but hey it looked action packed. Well I found out it was both of those movies, and a little bit of “Beyond Thunderdome” also.
The movie stars Rhona Mitra as Major Eden Sinclair, who is recruited by the Prime Minister (Cal Macaninch) and Michael Canaris (David O’Hara) to lead in a small group of cops to find out why they now have seen survivors of a contaminated area they had closed off over a quarter century ago. The reason was because of a very deadly virus named “The Reaper Virus” that started spreading and was so uncontrollable that the government put a wall around the entire infected area, in an attempt to just let the sickened die, and hope that the virus would stop there. Well after 25 years it’s back, and spreading again, and the prime minister has 48 hours to find a cure among the people who have survived inside the original outbreak zone. This is where “Escape” comes in. Our heroine Eden must go into the infected area, find a doctor named Kane (Malcolm McDonald), and see if it’s because of him finding a cure, that people have survived all these years. She only has 48 hours, or she can not return from the walled off area. Then it gets all “ThunderDome” once she’s inside and is captured by one group of survivors lead by their leader Sol (Craig Conway), who has a beef with the leader of the other group of survivors lead by Dr. Kane. She escapes Sol’s grasp, only to find out there is no help to be found with Dr. Kane either, as he puts her to fight with his strongest gladiator in a crowd viewed spectacle. Well after that our heroine finds a storage facility filled with old crates from the past, and happens to find a satellite phone and a new 2008 Bentley Maybach. On her way to meet with Michael Canaris to give him an actual survivor, it then turns into “Road Warrior” Sol and his minions are in hot pursuit, in a car chase scene that was not embarrassed to just go and blatantly steal stunts from another movie, and just change them slightly. I tell you, all you had to do was put Mel Gibson in the driver’s seat of a Maybach this time around. That too was funny in it’s own right, because in most car chase scenes you might be able to get glimpses of when they switch the good conditioned car with the one that actually gets banged up the most. Well let me tell you this, that Maybach never had a dent in it. Bentley was not giving up a Maybach to get damaged. They got a hell of a free advertisement, but with all the crashes, and bangs that car looked like it was doing, when you would look closer, there would be no damage, and it looked like they just put some dirt on it’s side, and that was it. The movie had a horrible script with lines like, “If you are hungry, have a piece of your friend” as she throws a decapitated head to the ground. The movie also starred Bob Hopskins as “Bill Nelson”, Eden’s captain, and good friend. I actually liked his character, because he just played a good friend, and it didn’t remind me of any other movies like the rest of the movie did… …unless you want to say how he was like a father figure in her life, oh damn, now thats spoiled too. I didn’t enjoy this movie, because I had seen it all before in at least three other known movies. But it did make the movie move faster knowing what all the outcomes would be. Think of how “ThunderDome” ended and you have the exact same ending in this movie.
Now since this movie had a quarter each of four different types of movies. I decided it should just get a 1/4 of a star. It surely didn’t get my attention enough for a whole star. The movie was distributed by Universal Pictures, under the studio of Rogue Pictures (Focus). It’s rated R for language, some sexual context/nudity, and extreme gore. I added extreme, because it did have alot of over the top death scenes. It runs 1 hour and 45mins, and was filmed in the UK, and South Africa.”Life is a movie, be a star” Ezo.
