By EWAN MCDONALD
(Herald rating: * * )
Danny Boyle, the British director who made his name internationally with the raw adaptation of Irvine Welsh's wretched novel Trainspotting, and did his best to lose it with the ridiculous version of Alex Garland's preposterous novel The Beach, reunites with Garland, who wrote the
screenplay.
The results are all too predictable: a great set-up followed by a cop-out instead of a pay-off. Jim (Cillian Murphy) is a London bike courier who is laid up in hospital after a bad accident. While he's out of it, activists free lab animals, not knowing that they're infected with a virus that turns them into savage killers. The virus quickly spreads to humans.
Jim wakes in an empty hospital and walks out to find the city deserted. He learns about the virus from old newspapers and two survivors: Selena (Naomi Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley). Selena tells him that the virus has spread to France and America and if someone is infected you have 20 seconds to kill them before they turn into a crazed murderer. They encounter two other survivors: Frank (Brendan Gleeson), a taxi driver, and Hannah (Megan Burns), his teenage daughter, who are barricaded in a high-rise apartment and have heard that there is a safe zone near Manchester. The group decides to risk the trip in Frank's taxi.
Manchester is roadblocked by an uninfected Army unit, under Major Henry West (Christopher Eccleston) who invites them to join his men at dinner . . .
The DVD is stacked with bonus features. Boyle shot the film on video to capture the feeling of a documentary and it comes across in startling clarity, backed up by a speaker-tingling Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround track. Commentary accompanies every feature, including slide-show photo galleries and deleted/alternative scenes; the full-length commentary by Boyle and Garland is recommended.
Pure Rage: The Making of 28 Days Later is a doco that tries to show that the film was made to warn the planet that the scenario depicted in the film is probable. It is of a level that just might persuade the people who also believe TV2 special scientific reports about Roswell. There are three alternate endings, each of which would have given a different tone to this ambitious but flawed film.
DVD, video rental: 28 March
