Doom

Karl Urban's performance goes beyond the call of duty.

Herald rating: * * * 

Knowing what usually happens when video games become movies we should be prepared to avoid thy Doom rather than meet it.

Since it was first unleashed in 1993, it has been the controversially violent and defining "first person shooter" of the video game era.

Having itself been influenced by James Cameron's Aliens, now it's reversed the mutation and become a movie. One which looks like an Aliens knock-off with a minimal lighting budget starring a pro wrestler, a former Shortland St star and an ex-Bond girl and helmed by a cinematographer in his first director gig.

Doomed? Well you'd think so. It's certainly no great leap forward for the whole sorry video game-to-movie genre.

But it is strangely enjoyable. Maybe it's the diminished expectations brought on by its PlayStation-to-multiplex predecessors, but Doom manages to hold the attention, laugh at itself, and play knowingly to its fanbase.

It even attempts to graft some science fiction to those bits of the film which don't involve splattering the brains of various bogeymen from Mars about the place.

It does have one extended sequence aping the first-person viewpoint of the game which is mildly diverting.

What's funnier though, is another scene where one of the good guys in mortal combat with one of the monsters uses a handy computer monitor to defend himself. Like, couldn't he just hit "escape"?

Doom has become sort of a bioterror hybrid zombie flick in the translation, losing the game's satanic overtones.

But it's all gone to hell on a red planet underground lab and archaeological dig - named Olduvai after Tanzania's archaeologically famous Olduvai Gorge

A Marine squad of various stereotypes and nicknames with The Rock as the gruff Sarge and Karl Urban as Grimm the troubled deep thinker of the platoon has been beamed up to sort it out.

It's all got something to do with the planet's extinct previous inhabitants - they've uncovered a humanoid skeleton which has been christened "Lucy", a reference to the real hominid skeleton found in Ethiopia.

It turns out Grimm's parents were archaeologists on Olduvai but died on the job. His sister - Dr Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike) is still in the family business. And it's her job to dissect all the undead creatures the squad keeps dragging back from the labyrinth.

Urban's performance goes above and beyond the call of duty of playing a simple space-grunt.

When he's not using those medical skills honed as a Shorty St ambulance officer, his solid screen presence is one of Doom's major saving graces.

In the meanest role of his short screen career, the Rock strains for effect.

But, like the game, Doom keeps you guessing about what's around that next dark corner. Even if you end up frequently laughing at the stupidity of the answer.


CAST: Karl Urban, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Rosamund Pike
DIRECTOR: Andrzej Bartkowiak
RATING: R16, violence, offensive language, horror
RUNNING TIME: 105 mins
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts Berkeley cinemas