Decided to catch Doom on Tuesday after my Math paper. Ironically, it was difficult to tell which was harder to sit through. Of course, in the end, the Math paper eventually won the fight between which was the more hellacious experience. But Doom came ridiculously close.

On the surface, Doom appears to be very true to the original series of games, especially the latest nightmare-inducing Doom 3. A rapid-response team of elite soldiers is sent to a research facility on Mars to deal with an unknown threat. The planet is on quarantine after an experiment goes awry and a group of scientists are in danger, believed dead. The soldiers, led by “Sarge” (The Rock), secure the facility, only to realise that the threat comes from within. It is up to “Sarge”, John “Reaper” Grimm (Urban) and Dr. Samantha Grimm to neutralise the demons of Mars before they invade the Earth.

The premise seemed worth the while, and to be fair, the initial build-up of the plot was rather well done. However, once the movie gets into the thick of the action, the whole piece just begins to fall apart. Now. I’ll chalk up the fact that the film felt chopped up to me to our ever reliable Board of Film Censors. But then I’ll have to blame the film’s editors for leaving so much audio and video unsynchronised. At places, one cannot tell who was responsible for toning down the film’s language, gore and violence - our local people, or the studio who probably wanted their target audience of young teenage boys to catch it.

Even The Rock, still my favourite wrestler of all time, couldn’t save the movie from self-destructing. Reports are rife on how he impressed many naysayers by turning down the “hero” role and choosing to go with the more original role of “Sarge”, thus proving that not only was he poised to be Hollywood’s next big action star, he also had the sense and maturity to pick and choose the roles he preferred. That being said, however, it was unfortunate that the screenplay writers didn’t do “Sarge” justice. Instead of playing to the natural charisma of the Rock, “Sarge” felt more two-dimensional that any of his previous roles. And indeed, when the twist (one that was spoiled by the Rock himself in an interview) came, not only was it unexpected, it was also unwarranted. I bet the spoiler was a necessity, given how the movie failed to foreshadow it.

Urban, last seen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, fails to impress here in his first major leading role. From the few movies I’ve seen of him, Urban plays the angsty, brooding stereotype to the hilt, but fails to deliver any other kind of emotion both as Eomir or here, as “Reaper”. One is forced to wonder if it’s the fault of the script and the character he’s playing, or if he is so emotionally-challenged as an actor that he can’t take on any other role. His lack of chemistry with co-star Pike is so apparant that it’s hard to believe they’re supposed to play twins.

Speaking of Rosamund Pike, you come out of the theatre wondering if she can do anything other than scream. In this age of pro-feminism and a move away from the damsel-in-distress stereotype, Doom turns back the clock and sticks out its tongue at the feminist movement by turning a capable, high-flying researcher into nothing more than a frightened girl who needs to be saved by her depressive, macho brother.

The movie’s saving grace, and perhaps it’s only reason for watching, is that it never tries to be anything more than what it was marketed as being: the movie adaptation of the award-winning game. Even the much-derided five-minute sequence of pseudo-”first-person shooter” action, which even included a little nod to the Doom 3 preview trailer, is nothing more than a reminder that this movie never set out to win awards or bothered to. And at the end of the day, Doom succeeds in being a waste of 100 minutes of one’s life.

A mediocre 6 out of 10.