I decided to give this previously passed up film a go after reading some good thoughts on it over at DVDR, I'm glad I did although i'm not quite as giddy about it as some of the aforementioned reviewers.
I wavered a lot in my final rating for reasons I'll delve into right now. On one hand this is a movie that is both fun to watch and has fun with it's material. On the other hand it's a movie that borrows amazingly liberally from a bunch of other movies and never quite feels like it's it's own film.
I'll try not to spoil much in giving some details of the movie but the basic premise is that a virus has broken out, Scotland has been quarantined, and decades later the British PM decides to send an army unit in when it appears that there are survivors out and about who show no signs of infection. The job of the army unit is to find out if a cure exists and bring it back.
Rhona Mitra stars as a bad ass military chick who leads the team and she's quite pleasant to watch and does a magnificent job in her role. The previously mentioned problem is that at times the movie feels as if we're watching scenes taken from 28 Days Later, Mad Max, Braveheart and Return Of The Jedi.
This is not to say that the scenes aren't fun, they pretty much are. It's just that they all feel like less of an homage and more of a lifting. The shots and acting are all very good and every advancing scenario made me giddy, going from wasteland, to highlands to highway chases. But once the initial giddiness wore off, the lack of originality set in.
Odd that at once I'd call this one of the more fearlessly original movies I've ever seen and at the same time a brazen rehashing of many films. I give the film makers credit though, it's never dull.
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