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Doom

(2005)

100 min. Universal Pictures. Director: Neil Marshall. Cast: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Alexander Siddig, Adrian Lester, Sean Pertwee.

In a presumably unintentional irony, one of the worst movies of the year (Doom) is set in 2046, the partial setting of one of the best films of the year (Wong Kar-Wai's 2046). 2046 is about the mysteries of love; Doom is about firepower. 2046 promises visual splendor and ideas; Doom is truth in advertising. Director Andrzej Bartkowiak (Romeo Must Die) makes "B" movies with "A-" budgets, and he knows it, but self-aware crap is, after all, still crap.

If Doom were legitimately entertaining instead of a sleep-aid, I would be swift to recommend it. The audience at which Doom is aimed will presumably get what they deserve and not much mind that it's entirely bereft of original ideas. At the introduction, by way of a caressing camera, of the Bio-Force Gun (a.k.a. The BFG a.k.a. The Big Fucking Gun), Doom's audience will presumably cheer while tourists like me roll their eyes.

Doom is based on the third in a series of popular first-person-shooter games with a science-fiction angle. In this installment, a Marine Rapid Response Tactical Squad takes advantage of a portal to the Martian Olduvai Research Station to investigate a massacre there and shoot whatever they find.

Ranking Marine "Sarge" is played by none other than The Rock, whose heroic stance gradually erodes as he clashes with Karl Urban's "Reaper" (you can't go teleport to Mars without first acquiring a cool nickname). Trying to connect the dots between the chaotic opening massacre and the rather calm scene to which the Marines arrive is a fool's errand; nothing in Doom makes much sense. Reaper has a Personal InterestTM in the mission—his sister is stationed at Olduvai—but characterization has never seemed less important in the rapidly growing genre of video-game cinema (and can anyone name me a good video-game movie? I won't hold my breath).

As far as character goes, one Marine snarls a lot and scars himself for every sin he commits, and Reaper muses, inaccurately, that "ten percent of the human genome is unmapped" (could it be a soul? could it be eeevil?). Mostly, though, Doom concerns itself with artillery motifs: selecting weapons and blasting them at beasties. The Rock delivers the film's most nonsensical line just before toasting a creature: "Semper Fi, motherfucker!" That'll teach the genetically mutated monster!

Eventually, Doom delivers its inevitable first-person shooter sequence. Though Bartkowiak wittily begins the sequence with the shooter looking in the mirror before the audience becomes him, I won't take responsibility for this sort of mindless entertainment. As far as I can tell, no one is at the controls of Doom.