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95 MINUTES | BOSTON COMMON + FENWAY + FRESH POND + CIRCLE + SUBURBS

Most movies based on video games fail to improve on the experience of watching someone play the game for the same length of time. Doom is the first one that doesn’t even try — the climax of the picture is an extended shooting rampage seen through the eyes of the protagonist, the aptly named John Grimm (Karl Urban). It’s the best part, too. Otherwise, the film is a paint-by-numbers affair, aping better movies like Aliens and Predator as it sends the worst-trained Marines on Earth to Mars to rescue the dumbest scientists in the galaxy. Light-speed galactic travel may be possible in the future, but will elite military troops have long hair and stubble and generally look as though they’d spent several days at the bottom of a well? Only the Rock, playing the tough-as-nails Sarge, is convincing. Doom is a loud, ugly movie, and even the relatively creative first-person sequence can’t make up for all that’s come before. It really just makes you want to play Doom.