Doomsday (18) **

3:29pm Friday 9th May 2008

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Doomsday begins proper in London 2035.

Prime Minister John Hatcher (Alexander Siddig) and his scheming aide Michael Canaris (O'Hara) summon Department of Domestic Security Chief Bill Nelson (Bob Hoskins) to an urgent meeting.

The Reaper virus has been detected in the capital. Unless a counteragent can be found within 48 hours, London will be ground zero for a global pandemic.

Thankfully, satellite photographs reveal people alive and well on the streets of Glasgow. Apparently there are survivors.

Canaris entreats Nelson to assemble a crack team to cross the wall and find a cure, starting at the laboratory of scientist Dr Kane (Malcolm McDowell).

Major Eden Sinclair (Mitra), an evacuee from Glasgow during the initial outbreak, leads the covert mission, joined by Sergeant Norton (Lester) and his troops, and doctors Talbot (Sean Pertwee) and Stirling (Darren Morfitt).

"What happens if I don't find anything up there?" Eden asks Canaris.

"Then you needn't bother coming back," he barks.

Doomsday begins promisingly but skitters into the realm of the ridiculous once Eden and her team encounter the barbaric survivors led by Sol (Craig Conway) and his punk-rocker heathens.

McDowell's raspy voiceover, dictating Kane's case notes, gives rise to more unintentional hilarity: "They've begun to feed off each other. It's medieval out there!"

Mitra's ballsy heroine, who lost an eye in childhood and now uses her hi-tech falsie as a camera to peer around corners, is emotionally untouched by her journey into the dead zone, and consequently so are we.

Supporting cast suffer inglorious fates at the hands of Sol or Kane's disciples, until the climactic car chase that sets every screech of burning rubber to Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Two Tribes".

"A one is all that you can score," declares lead singer Holly Johnson.

Marshall's film warrants slight more, but not much.

• See it at the Odeon