"If it breathes - kill it!"

This movie is based in the future and a portal has been discovered leading from Earth to Mars. The government has set up a research base on Mars supposedly to examine Martian relics and their lost civilization. Unfortunately the scientists are conducting genetic experiments and surprise surprise, something goes wrong. A group of marines are soon sent to the base to discover what happened to the scientists. Sarge, played by the Rock, leads the unit and they soon are shooting everything from zombie scientists to all manner of ugly beasties.

There are lots of problems with this movie. First, and there's no real way to get around this, the acting is terrible. The only exception to this, and I mean the only exception, is Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings). Everyone else who acted in this movie looked like they couldn't wait to go home. To go along with the bad acting, the plot is awful. It's an old and overused theme about saving the dumb scientists or civilians from evil critters. James Cameron's "Aliens" starring Sigourney Weaver was probably the best done of these types of movies. Doom, however, is nowhere near that league. The titles of the characters are also a bit cheesy (Goat, Reaper, Sarge, Kid, etc). I kept waiting for Maverick and Goose to pop out of a dark corridor. Finally, the film is really dark. I don't mean depressing, I mean it's poorly lit. Its probably a safe assumption that's its done to hide the sets or monsters but the audience needs to see something. The score, music, soundtrack, etc, are also horrendous.

With all of that being said the movie does stay true to its video game origins and Doom is one of the most popular video games of all time. This movie also has a dark humor about it and you actually laugh at some of the gory scenes and corny one liners like "If it breathes - kill it!" Also, Critics didn't seem to like it but near the end of the movie it switches to a first person shooter view as Reaper (Urban) fights his way through the beasties. Fans of the game, and I'm one, will enjoy seeing some of the old bad guys getting chopped up with the classic Doom chain saw.

Doom set out to be a grisly shoot-em-up video game take off and it succeeded. Don't expect brilliant acting and an academy award nominated plot because its not here. Doom is just campy, gory, and sometimes really stupid fun but in the end it's actually entertaining.

"INVENTIVE SUSPENSE"

Doom is the best videogame-to-movie adaptation ever made, but that's not saying much. Loosely based on ID software's genre-defining shoot-em-up (which itself owes a heavy debt to The Evil Dead) the film follows a troop of factory-finished badass marines on a trip to Mars, where angry monsters are playing skiprope with the intestines of a luckless scientific research team. The marines have names like Sarge, Reaper, Destroyer and Bite Off My Head You Alien Scum.

Director Andrzej Bartkowiak shows commendable restraint in keeping the monsters offscreen long enough to give us a passing acquaintance with his musclebound gang of sterotypes. There's even a girl scientist, played by Rosamund Pike, who gets the really cherishable stupid lines ("I'm a forensic anthropologist - I go where the work is," she tells Karl Urban's brooding hero). Character development thus dealt with, the movie turns into a meat grinder as the soldiers meet their blood-soaked doom at the hands of mutated genetic beasties. The original Doom's spooky occult trappings have been dispensed with; science is the bad guy here. Well, science and The Rock, manfully controlling his eyebrows in a rare villainous role.

"INVENTIVE SUSPENSE"

Towards the end of the film, the camera assumes the classic first person viewpoint of the game, in an extended sequence that's both a nod to fans and a genuinely inventive suspense device. There's nothing to approach this level of panache in the rest of the film, which is essentially a second rate Aliens knock-off. Still, it's a guilty pleasure.

Seen it watched it a thousand times before.

First i am no critic nor do i care do become one now. Second i like mindless senseless gun slinging kill "em" all and let God sort them them out movies with no plots and weak story lines that fall somewhere in between Sci-Fi and the horror genres. Thirdly i like the Rock, he is stuck between a rock and a hard place and cannot really seem to define his roles as to date. Baby sitter or grunt to avenging gilted lover with a vendetta, BUT, he adds a certain " I like that guy" to each role he portrays, though i wish he would pick a certain study (sci-fi) and stick with it, he is good at it. The movie in a nut shell is ok, it has some good effects and weapons are aplenty albeit somewhat dated for the year 2046, until our vaunted hero finds a way into the...!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!...top secret mars weapon labs and grabs the B.F.G. weapon, yes, if you were thinking what i think you are thinking B.F.G. stands for then you are correct, no need for me to expound on that bit of terminology further. The supporting cast carrys themselves well and they act and drill as a cohesive unit. You will find yourself guessing who gets killed off in a grisly fashion as the squad wanders deeper and further into the complex. Well nuff said, as you will note i rated this movie as good, i enjoyed it, it is NOT the video game and if this is what you purchased it for expect a big let down, but with a open mind you can, to a point, enjoy the fare presented to you, omit the little tikes though, this movie is laced with colorful metaphors and cussing like you aint never!!!, along with plenty of blood and dripping gore. Thank you for reading and have a nice movie time.

Doom - the rock

I read the finicky reviews and was not expecting anything decent but it wasn't so bad!
Yeah at times I was thinking "why did these people film this? Did they need money?" because it is based on a game and has its own world, it does not follow what we on Earth would call a story taken from life.

The special effects were rough at times and made me think that whoever did Pac Man was still doing his work on this movie, but since it's based on a game I took it with a grain of salt. The creatures were pretty wild and I like "alien chase on starship" whether under water, in outer space or on a Moon type of a movie.

I liked how certain characters, without spoiling anything, changed sides and there were a few nice plot twists. Karl Urban and surprisingly the dude known as The Rock were pretty good in this one.

Fun movie to see, but it's not deep soulful or Oscar nominee material.
Pretty much eye candy, but overall better than I expected.

Amazing Quality

Although i am more of a Blu-Ray Fan myself, i must say the HD-DVD quality is top of the line. This Movie is suspense filled and action packed. Based on the Video Game the specially trained tectical squad are the only people allowed in or out of a scientific research base on mars. As to not ruin the movie for those of you who have not seen it, i will focus more on the quality of the movie than the actual plot itself. By using HD-DVD or High Density - Digital Versital Disc, there are more pixels per square inch, which means you can take any film recorded movie and turn it into HD. The HD-DVD does this amazingly well. The movie is clear and sharp no matter where you look on the screen. On my 56 inch JVC hd-ila a regular dvd player is blurry and fuzzy, with the hd-dvd player, the picture is HD, just as clear as the programming you would get from your cable provider. Currently i would not recommend purchasing an HD-DVD player, or a Blu-Ray Player, the industry is waiting for your response, let them know you won't pay the 500-1000 dollar price for the player, wait until they drop the price. If they dont sell 500,000 before the end of 2006, they will drop the price drastically.
In My Opinion, wait, then by your player, HD if you want backwards compatability and cheaper price, and Blu-Ray if you want new technology with more movie titles.

Hope it helps!
-Jack