G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)

Am I the only sick S.O.B. here who found the original "G.I. Joe" to be entertaining? True it wasn't any kind of masterpiece by any stretch, but I had a shockingly good time watching it. I think the reason was the relatively minimal amount of superfluous B.S. attached to it. It was a movie that knew what it wanted to be, there weren't any notable boring stretches that I recall, and it was so over-the-top that it was just generally kind of awesome in a ridiculous kind of way.

So, as surprising as this may be to people who know me, I was actually looking forward to the sequel. The addition of Dwayne Johnson and Bruce Willis to the cast was enough to make believe that there might actually be something worthwhile to be found here.

Normally that kind of lead-in implies that I'm about to drop a really negative statement saying that my beliefs were sadly misled, but that's not happening here. Like its predecessor, I enjoyed "G.I. Joe: Retaliation." And like what happened with its predecessor, I'm sure my opinion is going to be a bit outside the normal since I'm guessing most will find it to be dumb. But I call it like I see it.

Following the events from the first film, but only bringing back a scant handful of cast members from it, we find the Joes doing their Joe thing and blowing stuff up, led by Duke (Channing Tatum) and new addition Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson). Apparently they are like BFFs. I had not been aware of that previously, since you know, Roadblock wasn't in the last movie. Meanwhile the POTUS is a Cobra imposter, and takes the opportunity to frame the Joes for...something, I don't know, and under that pretense orders an airstrike which wipes nearly all of them out. This leads to the surprising and frankly gutsy move to kill off Duke in the opening 20 minutes of the film.

Yeah, spoiler alert but honestly, do you really care all that much?

The survivors of the attack, Roadblock, Flint (D.J. Cotrona) and Lady Jaye (Adrianna Palicki) make their way back to the States to deal out the vengeance, as Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and newcomer Jinx (Elodie Yung) reenact the greatest game of Ninja Gaiden ever and pursue evil ninja Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee) to a monastery in the mountains. This makes for the most entertaining bit of the movie, as we are treated to absolutely insane ninja shenanigans over, across and around mountainsides as if "Cliffhanger" were suddenly "The Matrix." And that's pretty cool.

That also begins a trend with "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," which is that when you boil it down, this is actually a ninja movie. Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow may not have the most screen time, since that had to be given to the guys with their names big on the poster, but their story contains some of the more memorable moments of the film. And honestly if you took everybody else out you'd still have a reasonably coherent movie reminiscent of something Chuck Norris might have starred in back in the late 80's. And that's kind of awesome.

The President has been kidnapped. And Snake Eyes is indeed a bad enough dude.

If you watch the film from that perspective, it's actually pretty well done. I mean yeah, their storyline has The RZA showing up every once in a while to be really bad at acting, but other than that it's fun. I've seldom reason for complaint when ninja craziness is done well, and this film does indeed feature well done ninja craziness. So point to "G.I. Joe: Retaliation."

The rest of it is just acceptable. It's much like the first movie, being basically a highlight reel of explosions and shell casings flying out from the screen. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you. I'm not going to begrudge an action movie for having lots of action. And in a surprising twist, it's actually decently filmed action as well, occasional shaky-cam overindulgence aside. But it does get quite silly as far as the plot goes, and I'm talking the "G.I. Joe" cartoon level silly here. You know, the kind of silly where it stops you in your tracks, makes you do a double take and say "There's no freaking way." The amount that the imposter POTUS is able to get away with simply because he is the POTUS and the military hardware Cobra has simply because they're Cobra and have military hardware is pretty ridiculous.

 Don't you need 2/3's Senate approval to fly evil tyrant overlord banners from the White House?

That does lead to some (possibly intentionally) hilarious moments. My favorite was when the 8 world superpowers at a peace conference all whipped out their Nuclear Holocaust briefcases, which they all had with them just because I guess that's something you never leave home without, and they all pushed The Button in the most severe case of "Well that escalated quickly" ever recorded in movie history. But hey, it's "G.I. Joe." If you're not just rolling with it, your gonna have a bad time. And honestly, that scene did pay off far better than I was expecting it to. Cobra's plot is insane, but it did make the slightest bit of hypothetical sense.
 
I have to admit that I don't like the fact that Channing Tatum isn't in it for very long. I like Dwayne Johnson plenty but Tatum and he have really good chemistry together, far more so than the other two he's with for the majority of the film, and it was a real blow to the film to lose that. Even Bruce Willis just kind of seems bored here when he finally shows up, so it's like Johnson's got nothing to work with. But he and Tatum make a really good team.

So take all that for what it's worth. I'm not sure what I expected, but whatever it was I think I got it. Let it not be said I don't enjoy dumb stuff on occasion. I think it's just a matter of technical skill in which said dumb stuff was done. Hey, I've seen it done way worse. That's got to count for something.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

And can you believe that, in a startling upset, we have a film with a generic subtitle like "Retaliation" that ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE?! There IS retaliation in this film! And it fits the themes of the movie! I am so shocked by this I can't even tell you. Massive credit to "G.I. Joe" from me.

Check out the trailer for "G.I. Joe Retaliation!"

THE BOTTOM LINE - While "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" is probably going to be looked down at by everyone trying to not appear dumb, I have to admit that it and its predecessor were entertaining. Both films contain imaginative, over-the-top set pieces and action segments, they're pretty to look at, and despite the neutered PG-13 violence they manage to be fairly badass. While I think the previous one was a slight bit better, "Retaliation" had more awesome ninja stuff. I liked it.

Snitch (2013)

I am of the slightly odd opinion that Dwayne Johnson is a legitimately good actor. I know, I know. I don't care that the dude's a wrestler. When you've got it, you've got it. And Johnson is one of the most charismatic screen presences I've seen in the past ten years, ever since he first surprised us all in "The Rundown" back in 2003 by actually being pretty great in it. And as long as I'm spouting weird opinions, I've gone on record saying that I enjoyed "Doom," which Johnson was the highlight of. And now that he's done "Pain & Gain" and managed to steal the show while sharing a screen with Mark Wahlberg, can we finally admit that this guy has a legitimately huge amount of talent?

Seriously. This guy looks like a bad-ass while dressed like Matthew Broderick.

"Snitch" is one of those movies that Johnson does every once in a while to remind everyone that he can act and be a serious action movie star in-between all the kid stuff he does. While watching this I was reminded a bit of one he did called "Faster," which was by itself just alright, but managed to be one of those movies that was surprisingly better than you were probably expecting it to be. And like "Faster," "Snitch" turned out nearly the same with the difference being that not only was "Snitch" better than I expected, but I'd go so far as to call it really good.

Dwayne Johnson is John, a guy whose 18 year old son (Rafi Gavron) gets blasted with the incredibly harsh "minimum sentencing" policies of the American Justice System regarding drugs when he stupidly agrees to hold a box of ecstasy for a day for a friend. He immediately gets arrested since it was a set up, and even though it was his first offense and all he did was hold it briefly, the system mandates that he get slapped with 10 years in prison at the very least, possibly going to 30, unless he can rat out some drug dealers to get his sentence reduced (which is how he got set up in the first place).

Unfortunately he doesn't know any drug dealers, and he refuses to set up his friends, so in jail he rots. Not willing to see that happen, John works with a federal prosecutor (Susan Sarandon) to catch drug dealers in exchange for his son's freedom. We follow him around as he works angles and makes connections to become a drug trafficker as he gets reluctant (and possibly backstabbing) help from Daniel (Jon Bernthal), an ex-con who would rather not be doing this.

Also, Daniel is Commander Sheppard from "Mass Effect." True story.

All of this plays out like "Breaking Bad" or "The Sopranos," and it's really an intense little setup they've got going on as John gets deeper and deeper into this criminal world which is always two seconds and one slip-up away from tearing him and everyone he loves apart. While he's doing it, he's dealing with Susan Sarandon's character, who is nearly as despicable as the cartel members he goes up against, as she milks him more and more dry to get the most she can out of him, regardless of his safety and to the point where he is very likely going to die. By the end we're not really sure how in the world it's all going to play out. It's a bit of a nail-biter.

The cast is also worth calling out because everyone here just knocks it out of the park. Johnson is admittedly fantastic, but Bernthal threatens to steal the show with his intense "Clifton Collins Jr. meets Ben Foster" ex-con. The only problem was his accent which seemed to not solidify until the second act of the film. It wasn't too distracting, but it was kind of weird when I found out Daniel was Hispanic, because I honestly had no idea until he started in with the whole "Ay essay, yo loco, meng" thing seemingly out of nowhere.

Barry Peppers amazing beard also deserves mentioning as the most glorious facial hair since ever.

There is some Hollywood style violence that starts to flair up by the end, before turning into a straight up action flick, but while it seemed slightly dubious it wasn't outside the realm of possibility. It was less of an "Oh, come on" series of events are more of a "Well, that escalated quickly" scenario, if that makes sense. For sure it may seem weird that John is driving a big-rig and firing off a shotgun one-handed in a high speed pursuit with a drug cartel with cars flying off the road and exploding when he's been portrayed as a huge but average guy the whole film, but he is a truck driver by occupation and any idiot can figure out a shotgun. So I can't be that irritated. Made sense to me.

I have a feeling most people would call this one "forgettable," and while you may have to rack your brain to remember specifics about it after a few days, at the very least this is leagues ahead of the kind of movie you usually get with this scenario and budget. Usually this kind of stuff stars Paul Walker or something. Maybe Casper Van Dien. And screw that.

Check out the trailer for "Snitch!"

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Snitch" was surprisingly good for the kind of fare this usually is. It's what you would get if you took the average direct-to-DVD flick about a dad out for revenge and gave it to someone who knew how to make a movie. This one was solid, and features a lot of really good acting, including one of Johnson's best performances to date.

Pain & Gain (2013)

So Michael Bay made a movie for $26 million, huh? That is brilliant. Absolute genius, and it needs to happen more often to more directors. Give James Cameron all his usual equipment, the best stuntmen Hollywood can find and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the condition that he can't use CGI at any point. Give him a year time limit, too, since he won't have to wait for the stuntmen to catch up with his vision. Give Spielberg 100 grand, an RV, Tom Hanks and an HD camera and send him on his way. Let's see what he does. Make Uwe Boll film a movie on a cell phone. Hell, it'd probably be a step up from his usual stuff.

It's no secret that I'm not a Michael Bay fan. I guess when I was a kid I was, but that's only because Bay's target audience is the lowest common denominator and stupid children. I think that even at that time I knew what I was watching wasn't very good, but man, when you're 15 years old "Armageddon" just speaks to you. I saw that mess in theaters twice, son. That blew my young mind. And of course "The Rock," which is arguably Bay's best film (although the only reason it's good is the cast) was a monument to my adolescence. Then he did "Transformers" and all affection for Bay was lost on me, with little chance of ever returning.

I think this was the moment when my childhood officially died.

I won't say that "Pain & Gain" has brought me back into the Michael Bay fold, so to speak, but you know something? This is good. This is a really, really, really good movie. And it's not only a testament to the actors involved, almost all of whom give award-worthy performances, not only a testament to the writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, for making a true, horrible story about true, horrible people actually hilarious, but it's also a testament to Michael Bay himself, because with "Pain & Gain" he has outed himself as a very good director when he wants to be. And yes, it pains me to say it, but it's true.

"Pain & Gain" is the "so insane it can only be true" story about a trio of lunkheaded body builders who wanted more out of life. After all, they deserve to live the American Dream. So they kidnapped a rich guy and stole all his stuff. This all led to some torture and cold-blooded murder, and saw two of them ending up on death row. They actually got away with it for a while, but that's mostly because the story was so bonkers that the Miami police didn't buy a word of it. Or they were incompetent. But it was probably a little bit of both.

Danny Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) is the ring leader of the group. He's unsatisfied with his job working as a trainer at a gym when, after attending a motivation seminar by a guy named Johnny Wu (Ken Jeong), he decides he's going to be a "doer" and not a "don'ter." That's when he develops his scheme to kidnap one of his clients, a rich guy named Victor Kershaw (Tony Shalhoub), and take all his stuff. He enlists the help of his friends Adrian (Anthony Mackie) and Paul (Dwayne Johnson), and after a few bungled attempts they nab Victor and hide him in a sex-toy factory for a month before they finally end up with all his money, after which they try to kill him. Of course, since they're idiots they can't even get that right, so Victor is left alive and seething for vengeance.

Even with $26 million, Bay still gets the "Walk away from an explosion all cool" moment.

His only problem is that the police don't believe him for various reasons and, despite dubious circumstances, all the paperwork he was forced to sign while imprisoned which handed his possessions over to Danny is technically legit. Victor hires a private investigator, Ed DuBois (Ed Harris) to get to the bottom of everything, who is the guy who eventually catches up to Danny and the others. Of course Ed is helped by the fact that Danny and the others are, once again, really stupid.

The cast is across the board fantastic. It's takes a lot of talent to make characters this unlikeable be this entertaining, and in some bizarre ways the portrayal makes them almost lovable. Naturally these are terrible people, but you can't help but love Mark Wahlberg and his bright-eyed sincerity. Almost every word out of his mouth is either a terrible idea or something dumb enough to split the Earth in half, but he says it with such innocence and such gravity that you believe that to his 'roided up core he believes every syllable of it.

Even as he's being led away to prison, he's telling the person who caught him that he should work on his quads. I love this guy.

The only person who threatens to steal Wahlberg's thunder is Dwayne Johnson. Now, everyone else was great. They were fantastic. But just in case anyone out there was not yet aware that Dwayne Johnson was a shockingly talented actor, here you go. At first he's the innocent, even dumber, born again Christian simpleton of the group, but as the movie goes on and he indulges in the decadent lifestyle he finds himself immersed in, the drugs and money and pressure and guilt start making him crack. And it doesn't take too long before he's doing more really stupid things, which cause the spiral to go down even further. Meanwhile you can see the cold panic that is setting in right under the surface of his tough guy exterior, but you get the feeling he's too stupid to understand any of it. It really is a stunning performance.

The cameraman attempted the world's most epic high five with Dwayne Johnson. These are his last recorded moments.

One thing that has always remained constant with Bay is his style. As much as I despise the vast majority of his films it can't be denied that he's got a visual thumbprint that is impossible to miss. You know from the first few frames of the film whether or not it's a Michael Bay film. And "Pain & Gain" is no different. The shaky cam, the frankly pointless bits of slow motion, the nearly fluorescent color scheme, lots of lens flares, and the upward angle low-shots and dutch angels that have come to be his trademark are all here. It looks just like "Transformers" but without robots and Shia LaBeouf's stupid face.

And while visually it does border on obnoxious, had this been a first time director I wouldn't have minded. I would have just thought it was a guy with a strong and unique visual calling card, like David Fincher or Stephen Spielberg. I think I only find it obnoxious because it reminds me of other films I despise, which is distracting. I'm sitting there laughing my fool head off at Wahlberg, but in the back of my mind I'm dreading that any moment Skids and Mudflap will show up with fried chicken, watermelon and Kool-Aide.

That brings me to my biggest complaint about "Pain & Gain" - some of the humor. This is not only a Michael Bay movie in visual style, but also on occasion crap that's not really funny. This is a tableau of all the usual testosterone infused sexism, homophobia, bigotry and misogyny present in all his works, only it's cranked up to such levels that it makes me think that it's potentially satirical. I can't really tell. If that's the case it puts a whole new light on his other works, but suggesting that perhaps his brain-dead brand of machismo is a kind of parody is probably giving him too much credit.

That's his chainsawin' shower cap.

There's no way that it's a coincidence that so much of this film is hysterical, while also containing gags that are note-for-note the kind of sophomoric idiocy that we've seen time and time again with his films. The writers are talented, after all they are the duo that wrote "Captain America" and both "Thor" films. I find it hard to believe that they would have a fat man blasting poo all over a hospital bathroom after getting an enema, a priest coming on to Dwayne Johnson, Rob Corddry thinking that Walhberg telling him to "star 69" a guy means having sex with him, or a little person showing up to threaten Wahlberg and Johnson with a bat just because, well, little people are apparently hilarious. That crap is classic Michael Bay, and we've seen it time and time before with him.

I think it's those moments of non sequitur shenanigans that have nothing to do with anything that were put in there by Bay himself. They had to be. The rest of "Pain & Gain" is clearly parody. It's a bit mean spirited and by extension stupid because the characters are stupid, but one thing it isn't is nonsensical. Those random episodes of idiocy that reek of Michael Bay are too dumb to be satire. He's just getting in the way of the talented writers. It'd be like if Seth MacFarlane had been on the writing staff of "Blazing Saddles." All of a sudden Gene Wilder and Cleavon Little would step into a recreation of the music video for Toto's "Africa," because that makes sense, and we're all supposed to laugh because "the 80's."

But just as soon as that crap is over we usually cut to something awesome like Dwayne Johnson grilling human hands, so it all kind of evens out.
 

Even with those things in there, the rest of "Pain & Gain" is honestly kind of brilliant. And I think I've figured out why I liked these characters so much and had such a good time when in another Michael Bay movie I would have hated it. The reason is because unlike Shia LaBeouf or the rest of the cast in the "Transformers" series, we are never meant to like Wahlberg and Johnson. They are terrible people, but "Pain & Gain" doesn't insult us by trying to make us root for them. We don't necessarily want bad things to happen to them because they're so entertaining in their awfulness, but if they were to get caught we'd probably say "Well, they had it coming, the idiots." The horrible things they do are easier to laugh at when we're not expected to be on their side like they're the good guys.
 
Does "Pain & Gain" make me a Michael Bay fan? Hell no. Are you high? I still think his movies are generally borderline hate-crimes against anyone with a brain-stem. But let it not be said that I'm not merciful, because I always give credit where credit is due. This is a good movie. And Michael Bay directed. True, it might be good in spite of him, but it's still good. Now if he can just get away from CGI robots and do more stuff like this, maybe I won't consider scheduling eye removal surgery whenever another one of his films comes out.

Check out the trailer for "Pain & Gain." It's a pretty good representation of what the movie is like. (Red band trailer so NSFW)

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Pain & Gain" is a bit niche based on how utterly sleazy and mean spirited it is, but if you're someone who can appreciate some dark humor than this film is an absolute blast. I'm not completely sure, but this may be my favorite Michael Bay movie. Even if you hate him as a director, I'm seriously recommending this one. Crom help me, this might make my Top 10 of 2013. Trust me, I'm as surprised as you.

Doom (2005)

It's an old question, but it's one that bares repeating. And the main reason it bares repeating is that we keep getting subjected to movies that serve only to make the audience shamble out of the theater scratching their heads and asking it aloud to each other throughout the car ride home. They are not out of line to ask, either. In fact the question is quite logical, but may be unanswerable because reality does seem to defy common sense in this case.

"Why are video games so hard to make into movies?"

I don't have the answer for you. I really don't. It seems to me that video game movies, particularly the games of this current generation of consoles would be easy, at least from a script standpoint. Most games nowadays are pretty much interactive movies anyways. Have you ever played any of the obnoxiously numerous "Call of Duty" games? Those things are Michael Bay movies that let you choose when stuff blows up, which is often because out of the 8 buttons on the controller, 6 of them call in a napalm strike on the area directly ahead of you. As for the other two buttons, one of them spawns an ethnic person, and the other makes their head explode.

What I'm saying is at that point, all the hard work is pretty much done for you. Just play the game and write down what happens. BOOM. Script. If that's what they actually did it would save me a lot of annoyance, since I could just spend 2 hours watching a piece of crap like "Call of Duty" and get it over with relatively quickly instead of having to play it for 6. It would be cheaper, too. Having to choose between $9.50 for a movie ticket or $60 for a game isn't a tough call, especially when you know it's probably going to suck either way.

And shut up about multiplayer. If I wanted to get called a "fag" by 7th graders while they beat my ass I'd buy a time machine.

Oh, he may look tough. But s00perKrunk69 can't even drive yet. And he has zits. Lots of zits.

Video game movies have rightly earned a really bad reputation for their crap. Out of all the movie adaptations of popular games, and there's been a lot, you could count the passable ones on one hand. Which ones those are is subject to debate, and there would probably be a lot of changes to the list depending on who you asked, but I seriously doubt anyone's number would ever go past 4 or 5 movies. If that. I'm guessing most people would struggle to think of more than 3 video game movies they consider decent.

As for myself, I can only list 5 that I thought were decent. One of them is a movie you probably didn't know existed, "Oni-chanbara," a Japanese film adaptation of the "Bikini Samurai Squad" games, which in a reality shattering perversion of common sense was actually pretty good. I liked "Silent Hill" alright, "Mortal Kombat" from back in the day was kooky fun, and I don't care what anyone says, the Van Damme "Street Fighter" was frigging awesome. That movie is one of my "feel good" standards. From Jean-Claude's indecipherable accent to the late great Raul Julia chewing so much scenery you could have finished a basement with the contents of his lower intestine, it's fantastic. And I will duel to the death any who say otherwise.

He is so American. Just look at that tattoo. That's the most American arm I've ever seen. Yup. America.

The other movie is "Doom." Yes, I know, it's an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought that "Doom" was a reasonably solid action flick with a (very) light sprinkling of horror elements, and I would argue that it's one of the better video game movies I've seen up to this point.

I know that the biggest argument against "Doom," and indeed the argument that is always leveled at video game movies, is that it wasn't faithful to the source material. In that regard, I'm going to go ahead and disagree, but only to a point. First off, it's obvious that the tone of the film is more in line with "Doom 3," which was not as action-packed and mindless as the original games, in which you hit the ground running and never stopped pulling the trigger. "Doom 3" was more about atmosphere and anticipation of what's ahead, with fewer enemies and more horror elements as opposed to straight action. I'm not saying that makes "Doom 3" better, but that's the tone they went for.

"Doom" is obviously going for the "Doom 3" tone, and in that regard they succeeded. If they hadn't done that, and had gone for the original game's style, the whole movie could basically have been an hour and a half of that scene from "Predator" where Arnold and everyone else fires like 40,000 rounds of ammunition into the jungle. The only difference would be replacing every tree and bush with demons, and have them keep coming at them like clowns piling out of a car until there's a pile of them 90 feet deep. Not a single word would be uttered during the proceedings.

I dunno, maybe that could have worked.

Another argument against "Doom" was that there were no demons, and yes, here's where I will concede that they got it wrong. Instead of a portal to Hell being opened and all manner of gross stuff pouring out of it, they give us genetic mutations and gene augmentation which for some reason is attracted to evil. You see, in this movie, a race of humanoids on Mars created a 24th pair of chromosomes, which made them super intelligent and super strong. If they were good, that is. If you were bad, it still did all those things, but it also turned you into a bloodthirsty monster. Since in this movie there's a gene for the soul which labels you as "good" or "bad." So apparently "Doom" is Calvinist.

Okay, I can't really defend that. I'm not even going to get into describing all the why of how that's dumb, because you don't need me to. And yeah, it's the biggest problem of the movie, and the one point against it that I totally agree with and can't understand the purpose of. Was the phrase "Portal to Hell" just too much for the writers to comprehend? Seems to me that not only would that have made it more dark and disturbing, but it could have been more interesting and entertaining as well. Plus with a bit of clever writing you could tie it into "Event Horizon," and that would have been awesome!

I would have loved to have seen Karl Urban blasting his way through Hell. I can see him covered in offal and gore, bringing his shotgun up to shoot a winged demon in the face, its black viscera and brain matter splattering on Karl as he then proceeds to kick it in the chest, sending it tumbling over a precipice to plummet into a roiling lake of fire. I'm trying to think of a movie that's done anything close to that, and I'm drawing a blank. You'd think that if there was ONE movie that would have jumped on that idea, it would have been "Doom." It's enough to make a guy start writing fan-fiction. Ah well.

I think my favorite thing about "Doom" is the cast. Everyone knows I'm a huge Karl Urban fan, but I like The Rock, too. He's ridiculously entertaining and a legitimately good actor for the stuff he does. If you want him to be a badass, say no more. The man's 6' 4", like 500 lbs of muscle and can squint really well. He can be funny, and he's even got a fairly good dramatic range on display in stuff like "Faster." I don't mean this to sound condescending, but especially for a professional wrestler, the man's a shockingly good actor.

Karl and The Rock work really well together in "Doom." They gave what I found to be surprisingly good dialogue between them a lot more depth than you would expect. The Rock's character Sarge and Karl's character, Reaper, obviously have great respect for each other. When that starts getting interesting is in the back half of the film when Sarge and Reaper start having very different ideas on how to deal with the situation on Mars, because both of them are right in different ways.

Karl should have known The Rock would turn heel. After all, he is a wrestler.

Sarge, being the one in command, is doing precisely what his orders told him to do, even if it means killing everyone there and sacrificing himself and his entire squad if need be. Reaper is more emotional and refuses to go along with the script once Sarge starts issues orders akin to fighting a hangnail by cutting off the arm, very much in a "Let God sort 'em out" way. And what I liked about that was that honestly, Sarge is the one making the most sense.

I'm not saying it's not cruel and terrible or that I could ever do it, but if you were facing a situation with an outbreak that would potentially kill everyone on the planet, and it came down to making a choice between saving every single person regardless of their condition, or making damn sure that there was no way it could get out, and so be it if everyone there dies, you have to admit that the later is the more logical, if admittedly crueler choice. If you really think about it, Sarge, despite turning into the bad guy at the end, is doing far more to save the world than Reaper, our hero is. In fact, by surviving and escaping at the end, he's very likely putting the world in mortal peril.

An action hero surviving an action flick. What a jerk.

The end of "Doom" also has some of the best dialogue between the two as well. My favorite exchange in the movie comes right before their showdown, when they come to the decision that they're probably going to have to kill each other. Sarge asks if Reaper is planning on shooting him, to which Reaper casually replies "I was thinking about it, yeah." It's very John McClane, and it showcases why I love Karl Urban. He can deliver on the action movie lines, and that's no small talent.

That being said, I wasn't a fan of everyone in the movie. Richard Brake as Portman, the impossibly sleazy creep is pretty annoying, and his character doesn't get taken out near quickly enough. Portman is what you would get if Christian Slater and Iggy Pop merged and crapped out a rapist who started doing his best "Perverted Master Roshi" impression. It's unpleasant. Ben Daniels as the super-religious whack job Goat wasn't as annoying because he shut his mouth and wasn't up in everyone's face about it, but like Portman I had a hard time understanding why this guy is on the active duty roster for a Special Forces team.

If you carve a cross into your arm every time you blaspheme, a Section 8 should be an option.

Those were really the only two annoying characters though. The rest were basically stock and unmemorable with no real defining characteristics, and it was easier to know them by their cliche niches than their names. There was The Rookie, The Pervert, The Religious One, The Quiet Ethnic One, and finally The Big Angry Black Guy and The Smaller Friendly Black Guy, or alternatively Bill Duke and LL Cool J. Okay, it's not actually Bill Duke and LL Cool J but the resemblance is uncanny.

That's about the level of depth we're talking about. But it never seemed like an issue to concern yourself with because you knew they were all going to die anyway. That's how these movies roll. And there's nothing wrong with that. I only had three problems the characters, the first being that Porter The Pervert is around way too long. Although I love that during his death scene Sarge, without a second's hesitation, completely annihilates both the monster and Porter with the BFG without bothering to even attempt a rescue of Porter, whom at that point could have easily been potentially still alive.

The second thing was that Mac, The Quiet Ethnic One, does precisely nothing of value, and has but a single line before being randomly decapitated. I felt bad for the actor because he got screwed. At least Sonny Landham got to look badass by cutting himself with a machete.

Not saying it helped matters, but still, that was awesome.

Third, I hated the scientist, Dr. Carmack, played by Robert Russell. This freaking guy was near unwatchable. I know what he was going for, playing a beyond freaked out guy who has lost his mind and is in a constant state of hyperventilation, but he's so damn annoying with it. He's got this thing he does with his tongue darting in and out, and between that and him puffing his cheeks with his rapid fire breathing he looks like a sweaty rodent. About the only cool thing he did was pull off his own ear. That was sweet, but the stupid tongue thing just drove me up the wall. It was the same thing David Tennant did in the forth "Harry Potter" movie. And they get the camera SO close to his mouth while he's doing it. So annoying.

Finally we have the matter of the First Person Shooter sequence, which I've heard many people label as the moment where it finally keeled over and died. This was the final straw for some audience members. This was Fonzie on skis right here. For them, the 5 minutes where we are looking through Reaper's eyes wasn't so much a tribute to "Doom" as it was tea-bagging its corpse.

Oh yeah. Such a betrayal. This looks nothing like "Doom."

Honestly, I think those people are nuts. The FPS sequence for me was possibly the best highlight of the film, if not certainly the most memorable. More than anything in the rest of the movie, that part was the most fun "Doom" got, and I think it could have used a lot more of that hokeyness, because "Doom" should be before anything else, fun. As I understand, an early concept for the movie was to have the entire film be in first person like that. I'm not sure if that would have worked, but I would have loved to have seen it.

Look, I know I'm not going to convince anyone that "Doom" is a good movie. I'm not naive. If you're not into that kind of movie or genre, or if you think it's too big of a betrayal and can't look past its faults, then yeah, it's going to be painful to sit through. But if you're like me, and can see it for what it is, which is a cheesy sci-fi action flick that plays it safe but competently, at the very least you have to admit that it's trying. And for what it set out to do, it succeeded with at the very least a C+.

After all, it could have been worse. It could have been PG-13.

Check and mate, "Doom" haters.

THE BOTTOM LINE - I like "Doom." I like the two leads. I like the look and feel of it. I like that they actually gave a story to what is a game with literally no plot besides "Mars. Demons. Shoot." Is it a great movie? No. Did it ever have a chance to be? Not really. Is it better than your average video game movie? You're damn right it is.