Search - Doom (Unrated Widescreen Edition) on DVD

Amber M. from MORROW, GA
Reviewed on 12/19/2013...

This is one of my favorites, and for a lot of reasons. The actors are all great, especially Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. There is a great deal of action and fantastic special effects, and the story moves along at a nice pace. It's got some good emotional scenes too, and I love the relationship that develops between two of the characters. Wonderful action movie.

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Fails to meet already low expectations

RMurray847 | Albuquerque, NM United States | 09/18/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"When one contemplates watching a movie like DOOM, surely ones expectations are always pretty low. Lots of gory sci-fi action is probably all one can hope for. DOOM provides a fair dose of that...but it also provides other, less welcome aspects...mostly involving guys with big guns walking around dark, steel corridors doing nothing but looking anxious and sweating.



I understand that action scenes and such are pretty expensive to make, particularly when they call for convincing CGI monsters. But to pad the story to feature length by filling it with interminable scenes like this makes the whole enterprise virtually fall apart. Having just seen the "unrated director's cut" at 1:53, I would say the film EASILY has 30 minutes of utterly unneeded padding.



Set in the future, a group of marines is dispatched to a research station on Mars, where a significant portion of the base is on lockdown after some kind of mysterious, violent event took place. The marines, led by "Sarge" (The Rock, before he had gone to being Dwayne Johnson and playing a Tooth Fairy) are a typically diverse group, with nary an original character in sight. Karl Urban is the nominal 2nd in command, and it just so happens that his estranged sister (Rosamund Pike) is a scientist at the station.



They poke around for awhile, and after a LONG time, find some monsters and the gunplay commences. And it all feels like little more than a third-rate ALIENS rip-off. Monsters appearing behind marines, above marines and below marines. Our characters picked off one by one. A conspiracy that implicates the scientists in some pretty shady experiments. And so forth, from one unoriginal idea to another.



Again, that would almost be okay, because it's the action we came for. But until the last 15 minutes or so, the action feels complete rote and uninspired. Fortunately, the film goes from being a complete waste of time to a mostly complete waste of time when it finally turns into a direct homage to the classic video game on which it is based. (In case you didn't know, DOOM was the original "first person shooter" where the game is played as though through the view of the player. You see your own gun in front of you and move through corridors and chambers, shooting everything that moves.) Urban takes on this view and for about five minutes, we get the fun of seeing a beloved, but very old, video game brought to life. It even emulates the flowing style of the character moving through space...a movement that it trying to emulate real life but doesn't quite. This is good, clean fun...something the rest of the film misses.



The performers are all unremarkable, even Pike, who bounces from these modern action films (DIE ANOTHER DAY) to high-quality projects like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and her wonderful work in AN EDUCATION. Urban is bland and The Rock is all attitude and no real character. The special effects were also merely adequate, and the soundtrack was all generic blaring techno.



In summation, there really isn't a good reason to see this film. I had VERY low expectations, and even those were not met.

"

Weird but...

Laura | SW Virginia | 02/02/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I love this movie. I am not a fan of the games though. I really hope they make a sequel. As for some people saying this movie strayed too far from the games my husband said it wasn't true. He said it had alot of the same things although where it took place was definately different. GO REAPER! **YUMMY**"

Doom- a bloody/action packed/sci-fi horror film

POD JAWS | 01/30/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Doom is an awesome movie and it is kind of funny that Dwayne "THE ROCK" Johnson is now playing a tooth fairy insted of a sarge in the movie doom



Plot- (Quite simple actually) a team of space soldiers are sent to an area where science has gone haywire, now they stumble upon mutants that are taking them down one by one and the question is who will surive "THE ROCK" or Karl Urban and his sister!



Acting- awesome/bad-ass/somewhat funny acting with lines such as "i wasnt supposed to die!" or "There's something behind me isn't there!



Gore- a pipe to the hand, a decapitation, lots of blood splatter, bashed bodies, a severed hand, gory images and more!



Bottom Line- 4 out of 5, it's just like the critics say, a roller coaster ride!



Rated R for strong violence/gore, and language/ Time 101min/ 2005/ Color"