All of this is a setup for a child-in-terror movie, in which a child is the eyewitness to a brutal murder and the incineration of the body. Then the kid sees his father hammered to within an inch of his life, his mother beaten until she has a miscarriage, and himself as the unwitting cause of an electrocution. I mention these details as a way of explaining why the flywheels at the MPAA Ratings Board gave the movie a PG-13 rating. Certainly it doesn’t deserve an R, like Amelie or Waking Life.
The movie is a paid holiday for its director, Harold Becker. I say this because I know what Becker is capable of. This is the same director who made The Onion Field, The Boost, and Sea of Love. If this is the best screenplay he could find to work on, and it probably was, all I can do is quote Norman Jewison at this year’s Toronto Film Festivaclass="underline" “You wouldn’t believe the——the studios want you to make these days.”
Sad, because there are scenes here showing what the film could have been, if it hadn’t abandoned ambition and taken the low road. Travolta plays Frank Morrison, a boat builder and all-around nice guy—so nice he’s even optimistic about the approaching marriage of his ex-wife, Susan (Teri Polo). Frank’s son, Danny (Matthew O’Leary), is a little dubious about this new guy, so Frank even takes the three of them on a fishing trip together. But Danny is still upset, and has a habit of lying, running away, and not turning up for basketball games. He’s Trying to Tell Them Something.
The fiancé is Rick Barnes (Vaughn), new in town, who has made a lot of money and is about to be honored by the Chamber of Commerce. But when his old buddy Ray (Buscemi) turns up uninvited at the wedding, Rick’s eyes narrow and his pulse quickens and it is only a matter of time until the domestic drama turns into a domestic monster movie. You know it’s a bad sign when you’re Frank, the understanding ex-husband, standing around at the reception, and Ray tells you your ex-wife “must know some pretty good tricks to make old Rick settle down.”
Suspense builds, not exactly slowly, in scenes involving an ominous game of catch. Then there’s a scene that flies in the face of all logic, in the way the child is made to be an eyewitness to murder. The physical details are so unlikely they seem contrived even in a thriller. All leads up to a final confrontation so badly choreographed that I was not the least bit surprised when the studio called to say the Chicago critics had seen “the wrong last reel,” and would we like to see the correct reel on Monday? I agreed eagerly, expecting revised footage—but, no, the only problem was the earlier reel was lacking the final music mix.
Music is the last thing wrong with that reel. Apparently the filmmakers saw no problem with the way a key character enters on cue, at a dead run, without any way of knowing (from outside) where to run to, or why. No problem with a fight scene so incomprehensibly choreographed it seems to consist mostly of a chair. And no problem with a spectacularly inappropriate speech at a crucial moment (it’s the one beginning, “Too bad… “). This speech provides additional information that is desperately unwanted, in a way that inspires only bad laughs from the audience, just when you want to end the movie without any more stumbles.
Doom
(DIRECTED BY ANDRZEJ BARTKOWIAK; STARRING KART URBAN, ROSAMUND PIKE; 2005)
Doom has one great shot. It comes right at the beginning. It’s the Universal logo. Instead of a spinning Earth with the letters U-N-I-V-E-R-S-A-L rising in the east and centering themselves over Lebanon, Kansas, we see the red planet Mars. Then we fly closer to Mars until we see surface details and finally the Olduvai Research Station, helpfully described on the movie’s Web site as “a remote scientific facility on Mars”—where, if you give it but a moment’s thought, all of the scientific facilities are remote.
Anyway, that’s the last we see of the surface of Mars. A lot of readers thought I was crazy for liking Ghosts of Mars (2001) and Red Planet (2000) and Total Recall (1990), but blast it all, at least in those movies you get to see Mars. I’m a science fiction fan from way back. I go to Mars, I expect to see it. Watching Doom is like visiting Vegas and never leaving your hotel room.
The movie has been “inspired by” the famous video game. No, I haven’t played it, and I never will, but I know how it feels not to play it, because I’ve seen the movie. Doom is like some kid came over and is using your computer and won’t let you play.
The movie involves a group of marines named the Rapid Response Tactical Squad, which if they would take only the slightest trouble could be renamed the Rapid Action Tactical Squad, which would acronym into RATS. The year is 2046. In the middle of an American desert has been discovered a portal to an ancient city on Mars. The Olduvai facility has been established to study it, and now there is a “breech of level five security,” and the RRTS are sent to Mars through the portal to take care of business. Their leader is Sarge (The Rock), and their members include Reaper (Karl Urban), Destroyer (Deobia Oparei), Mac (Yao Chin), Goat (Ben Daniels), Duke (Raz Adoti), Portman (Richard Brake), and The Kid (Al Weaver). Now you know everything you need to know about them.
On Mars, we see terrified humans running from an unseen threat. Dr. Carmack (Robert Russell) closes an automatic steel door on a young woman whose arm is onscreen longer than she is, if you get my drift, and then he spends a lot of time huddled in the corner vibrating and whimpering. We meet Samantha Grimm (Rosamund Pike), sister of Reaper (aka John Grimm). She is an anthropologist at the station, and has reconstructed a complete skeleton of a humanoid Martian woman huddled protectively over her child. If you know your anthropology, you gotta say those are bones that have survived a lot of geological activity.
The original Martians were not merely humanoid, Dr. Grimm speculates, but superhuman: They bioengineered a twenty-fourth chromosome. We have twenty-three. The extra chromosome made them super smart, super strong, super fast, and super quick to heal. But it turned some of them into monsters, which is presumably why the others built the portal to Earth, where—what? They became us, but left the twenty-fourth chromosome behind? Is that the kind of Intelligent Design we want our kids studying?
Despite all of her chromosome counting, Dr. Grimm says at another point: “Ten percent of the human genome has not yet been mapped. Some say it’s the soul.” Whoa! The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003, something you would think a scientist like Dr. Grimm should know. I am reminded of the astronauts in Stealth reminding each other what a prime number is.
The monsters are still there on Mars. They are big mothers and must have awesome daily caloric requirements. How they survive, how they breathe Earth atmosphere in the station, and what, as carnivores, they eat and drink—I think we can all agree these are questions deserving serious scientific study. Meanwhile their pastime is chasing humans, grabbing them, smashing them, eviscerating and disemboweling them, pulling them through grates, and in general doing anything that can take place obscurely in shadows and not require a lot of special effects.
Toward the end of the movie, there is a lengthy point-of-view shot looking forward over the barrel of a large weapon as it tracks the corridors of the research station. Monsters jump out from behind things and are blasted to death, in a sequence that abandons all attempts at character and dialogue and uncannily resembles a video game. Later, when the names of the actors appear on the screen, they are also blasted into little pieces. I forget whether the director, Andrzej Bartkowiak, had his name shot to smithereens, but for the DVD I recommend that a monster grab it and eat it.