'Doomsday' a decent '80s throwback

Now, as the '80s continue to return in increasingly terrifying ways, "Doomsday" revives the post-nuke template. Like dozens of Reagan-era Italian knockoffs, it mixes the journey-into-anarchy plot of "Escape from New York" with the cyberpunk fashions and clashes from the "Mad Max" sequels. Nods to "28 Days/Weeks Later" prove it's contemporary and British.

The result is as entertaining as 1982's "The New Barbarians" or 1983's "Endgame." However, with a bigger budget than those Eurotrash cable classics of yesteryear, writer/director Neil Marshall can go wild with the carnage, and, thankfully, he does.

A voiceover tells us that in April 2008, the uncontrollable "Reaper virus" laid waste to Scotland, and a giant steel wall was erected around the entire country to seal off the infection.

After 25 years, Great Britain's become a teeming slum, and the virus reappears, threatening the rest of the United Kingdom. Suddenly, evidence of survivors from the Scottish outbreak becomes useful to the British.

Rhona Mitra stars as Major Eden Sinclair, a tough soldier enlisted by her Domestic Security mentor (Bob Hoskins) to lead a team beyond the wall and find a cure.

In what's surely a wink to Kurt Russell's eye patch-sporting mercenary from "Escape," Sinclair also has one eye, a souvenir from the night she was rescued as Scotland was sealed off, leaving her mother behind.

It's not long before the team runs afoul of wasteland denizens, who dress like punk rock cavemen according to genre tradition. Their leader, Sol (Craig Conway, bearing an eerie resemblance to cult horror actor Michael Berryman), holds a flamboyant rally during which he dances to an old Fine Young Cannibals hit (!) and roasts one of the Brits to feed his people.

Sinclair and a few others escape and locate Kane (Malcolm McDowell), once a government scientist searching for a cure but now ruling his own Luddite society inside a medieval castle.

Between brooding and preening, Kane tells Sinclair the secret to survival, then sticks her in a "Thunderdome"-style arena.

"Doomsday" is dragged down by spastic editing during the action sequences, and it lacks the claustrophobic tension of Marshall's previous films ("The Descent," "Dog Soldiers"). Yet, from the fallout punks' outrageous hairdos to the final highway brawl, the filmmaker delivers a decent homage to end-of-the-world survival sagas, a little too flashy but still fun.

"Doomsday"

2 stars out of four

Starring: Rhona Mitra, Bob Hoskins, Adrian Lester, David O'Hara, Malcolm McDowell

Written and directed by: Neil Marshall

Other: A Rogue Pictures release. Rated R (strong bloody violence, language and some sexual content/nudity). 105 minutes.