Végítélet

Százszor látott dolgok unalmas összevisszasága, egyetlen ötlet nélkül, átláthatatlan akciójelenetekkel és lapos karakterekkel. Minél nagyobb téren mozog Neil Marshall - akár íróként, akár rendezőként - annál nagyobb balhé lesz belőle. A Végítélet a legterjedelmesebb filmje. (2008.04.13)

As an undemanding action movie it’s fine, but enumerating all the holes in logic would need an entire book. I didn’t mind the alternating genres, what was bad was the editing, which made some action scenes utterly incomprehensible. The final car chase was awesome. B-movie fun, no more than that. (2008.05.28)

Lacking any sense of proportion, common sense, and higher filmmaking ambition, Neil Marshall commits the craziest cinematic theft on the m2 film box. But he also damn well entertains us for a hundred minutes, lecturing at the High School of Grindhouse in a latex suit, punk haircut, and sword in hand, in a distinguished British style. Hopefully someone will attend the class and learn something. (2008.05.08)

It's as if Neil Marshall is making fun of the whole world. He's got a lot more money than he's used to and he's totally off the rails. There's a lot of gloriously uncompromising violence, badass one-liners, and a perfectly cracking atmosphere. It has its charms and you can tell it doesn't take itself seriously at all, but unless you grew up on Escape from New York and watch Mad Max twice a year, it's probably not going to work for you. The editing could be less chaotic. (2008.04.03)

Of course, the editing is at medium (at least), and it's alarming that the director can't work with such trivial prototypes of the characters he prescribed, but I really enjoyed the structure of the film, which is not stupid at all - it's even playful and reflected. It is a combination of computer game fields (de facto 3 distinctly stylized maps - realpolitik London, punk Glasgow and the medieval Highlands) with a plot of descent into the heart of darkness (including highlighted moments of "transitions" of space-time zones - a steel gate, a steam train and a tunnel under the hill). To take it apart a little more seriously: on the one hand we have pragmatic politician-dominated London, in between an anarchist zone of pure libido and uncontrolled instincts, and on the other hand the "science and intellect" spectrum, which has degenerated into a dark tyranny of the enlightened mind. In the meantime, the protagonist cheerfully surfs, does not negotiate a world remedy and returns to where the whole film belongs - to the cheerful, decadent and entertaining-cannibalistic level (by the way, if the action sequences are edited shitty, the cannibalistic pop culture feast is brilliant!). The order of politicians is corrupt, the scholars have gone mad, so the slightly mutilated Rhona Mitra is one of the raffish Scottish punk and anarchists. No great salvation. I'm very sorry that a second film won't be created, where the suits will fight the enchanted cannibals in kilts. For a long time now, no "childish revolt" had amused me as much as the purposefully naive anarchist rebel Doomsday (a luxurious shiny Bentley vs. Mad Max wrecks... a steaming crowd waiting for a ration of human flesh with plastic plates... like WTF? This is simply brazenly stupid and not superficially stupid). Marshall simply serves declining entertainment without pretense - human meat is grilled to the sound of pop hits. Oh yeah. (2012.10.14)

The descendants of William Wallace (aka Mel Gibson) and Mad Max (Gibson again, yuck, shame on you Mel!) in a version for 2035 dance a C-grade cancan at the Grindhouse club accompanied by the A-grade rhythm of “Známky punku" (Signs of Punk) by Czech punk band Visací zámek (Padlock). And I join in with Marshall and his crazed pogoing. I as keen as a little kid who’s going to meet Sponge Bob for the first time. The supposedly confused editing didn’t bother me (unlike The Descent) and so I would only fault the needlessly long foreplay to the crazy ride that starts at the precise moment when the first punk Mohawk appears. So don’t spit in this punk-rocker’s face, every movie appeals to somebody’s taste. And let’s hope Doomsday will appeal to enough people for Neil to attract some further projects to the future. It would be a shame to lose him, especially if he gave us more five-star sequences like the forty minutes from escaping from the platform through the adaptation of Twain’s Yankee from Connecticut to King Arthur’s court, all the way to the ending car chase in the Bentley. (2008.07.21)

Neil Marshall is a master of trash who delights in original variations on subgenres and categories to such an extent that it’s astonishing that someone would give him money for it. From today’s perspective, however, that is no longer true. To a significant extent, Marshall made his living off the existence of the hungry global DVD market, which secured him fame in certain circles. Following the collapse of the DVD market, Marshall, like many other genre barbarians, found refuge in television, where he accepted the role of a mere wage-earning craftsman. Doomsday remains his most unhinged and most entertaining film. Despite the obviously limited budget, he amazingly unleashed his combination of genres and local sentiment, thus creating the ultimate trash flick in ultra-British attire. The odyssey to find a vaccine against a deadly virus takes viewers through a full range of genres, which are proudly combined with British elements, motifs and actors. In individual parts of the film, we identify the attributes of zombie movies, spy flicks and cyberpunk. The post-apocalyptic world gradually transitions from allusions to Carpenter’s Escape from New York to Cameron’s Aliens before resting for a moment in a Mad Max style enhanced by elements of punk concerts, so that it can travel by train a la Harry Potter to the magically Arthurian landscape of the highlanders. In addition to the casting of British faces with domestic genre icons Malcolm McDowell and Bob Hoskins at the fore, the film maintains throughout its runtime a certain British punk exaggeration reflected in, among other things, the regular incorporation of elements that relate to the contemporary world of film, whether the collection plates of the Mad Maxian cannibals or the direction signs of the medieval castle tour. However, Marshall did not have a bottomless budget, so he tried to use frantic camerawork and editing to conceal compromises in the set design and deficiencies in the choreography and other phases of scene preparation. Even though that is extremely annoying, in the end it works in the overall meta-trash concept, for which nothing is sacred except for unbridled entertainment and the ethos of Junktown. (2020.11.23)

The creators of the film probably thought that the post-apocalyptic sci-fi genre was currently trending at the time and that they could contribute to it. Do film fans like car chases? They do, so we'll throw some in there. Do they like dark medieval settings? Undoubtedly, we'll accommodate them. Do they like bloody gladiator games? They're already in there. Do they like horror-inducing punks? You got it. And there will be an army of them. What works 100% is bloody violence, so we won't spare that. We'll add some special effects and decent set design - we managed to get the money for that - and to ensure guaranteed success, we'll use a number of tried and true genre clichés and scenes that fans already know from other movies. We just have to mix this whole pulpy concoction properly, and because we are aware that we have created (crap), we will act confidently and disarm any criticism by presenting it as our creative intention. This was probably how things played out during the shooting of  Doomsday, and the results speak for themselves. At times, it is even attractively B-movie-like, but the overall lack of originality and stupidity just ooze from the film. If we're talking about a sympathetically low-budget B-movie, I would bet on Carpenter's Escape from New York, who managed to make a significantly better film with considerably less money. Doomsday is essentially a rip-off of Mad Max and older Carpenter films like Escape from New York or Escape from L.A. Overall impression: 20%. (2009.06.10)

Slightly above average B-movie crap, which is lucky that it moves fast (something is practically always going on) and entertains, so you almost don't even stop to think about how unoriginal it is. Neil Marshall takes something from many famous (and better) films, throws it in the pot and cooks up this post-apocalyptic stew. It's not a bad meal, but as I said - you can eat it on your own. Leave your brain somewhere better for now. Best scenes: The ambush in the "deserted" town, the feast, Malcolm McDowell's speech (the guy is seriously the devil) and of course the whole final Bentley scene, which is so over the top it's brilliant. (2010.08.17)

Utter guilty pleasure. Neil Marshall said “sod everything” and put together a relentlessly entertaining tour into the world of computer games and B-movie post-apocalypse without any pretensions other than delivering a deluge of bloody, playful and often unpredictable attractions. Everything starts with the expected generic variation of the zombie subgenre, but the story soon turns into a straightforward badass reflection of declining pop-culture, with a punk cannibal evening in the style of Mad Max that alternates with medieval locations and insane car chases. And our guide through all this unleashed creative nonsense is the incredibly sexy Rhona Mitra – watching her is itself an analytical delight. The editing is a bit too frantic perhaps, but it rarely becomes an obstacle to clarity and Marshall’s narrative dynamics, which I have never enjoyed more. After a second screening I’m giving it 4* and I’m putting Rhona as my desktop background. (2020.01.20)

Doomsday offers absolutely nothing new in the post-apocalyptic genre, but it’s still entertaining. I especially appreciated Rhona Mitra's hilarious hi-tech eye. It was interesting to see the effects of the virus on the Scottish population – turning them back into savage Picts with cannibalistic tendencies. No wonder they have always been perceived as a threat by the English. A fun action movie. (2016.06.25)