Bridge of the Doomed

Lured in by a psychotronic-sounding title, I sat down for this low-budget effort and immediately got pulled up short. Now, I'm not naive enough to expect filet mignon efforts on a potted meat budget, but I did expect to have a reasonably good time without too many rough edges and seams showing to distract me from the movie. Not so. The first clue that this movie was going to be a mess was the fact that it's list of executive producers was probably longer than the cast and crew COMBINED.

Really. I lost count after 60. The movie was produced by Mahal Brothers Productions, which apparently relies heavily on crowdfunding and isn't above using the bigger donors to fill out minor roles or as extras. So, you have professional actors like Michael Paré delivering the goods next to overweight crowd funders delivering lines with all the subtle nuance of particleboard. In any other venue, this talent disparity would be fine (high school or community theater production), but in a mainstream film I do expect a modicum of professionalism; there's a big difference between a professional actor who can't act vs. A non-actor who has been shoehorned in because they contributed a few grand to the film's budget. I'm a firm believer in the old maxim about lots of cooks and broth, so I can't help but wonder what other machinations these execs did to make the movie worse than it was. A zombie apocalypse of unspecified origins is the reason we have a group of soldiers going to secure and/or destroy a key bridge. That's after we get almost 30 minutes of scenes of people belching out exposition or being massacred by zombies, little of which has to do with the bridge. Once we get to the bridge, things get marginally better, with an unspecified monster underneath that begins dispatching the soldiers. For some reason, the zombies have gotten out of the cities and are stumbling around this rural landscape, so they're a threat as well. Add in a hostile group of survivors, John Birch types who wouldn't like authority figures like army personnel anyways, and you should have enough conflict to generate interest, right? Nuh uh. This movie somehow manages to be boring even with all these factors. I have to wonder if this movie was some sort of tax write off, or simply created to fill the world with product. It's utter lack of entertainment seems to point to this.

It is getting harder and harder to bring originality to the zombie genre, but Bridge of the Doom manages provide a somewhat novel plot and setting. The action sequences and the zombies looked great for a big budget independent film.

Big fan of Michael Pare since Eddie and the Cruisers so always great to see him in something. The rest of the cast was great including Robert Lasardo, leading lady Kate Watson, Sarah French, & Kimberly Cole.

Also enjoyed this movie's pacing as it had a non stop vibe about it. Overall a fun watch.

The movie tries really, really hard. I give it an A for effort. Unfortunately it just never really comes together. It's hit an interesting concept. A squad of soldiers must hold a bridge during a zombie outbreak. The zombies aren't their only problem. There's also a demonic creature that lives under the bridge that also proves to be a lethal. The movie delivers plenty of action. There are numerous battles between the soldiers and the zombies. There's also a film is also suitably gory. The acting is mediocre to bad, but I can get past that in a movie like this. Ultimately the movie lacks focus. There are several confrontations between the soldiers and a refugee camp in the woods nearby that never really go anywhere. Then there's the beast under the bridge. It's a completely unnecessary addition that never fully develops either.

Overall the movie is a decent watch for zombie fans. We've seen a lot better but we've seen much, much worse.

Overall, I found the story very disorganized. A good film needs a flow and this film doesn't flow. The characters were mostly one-dimensional; however, there were two that stood out.

First and foremost, I watched this movie because my dear friend Kimberly Lynn Cole was in it. She always brightens the screen with her magnetic beauty and she really stands out in this flick playing the wife of a very bad man.

Secondly, I love Robert LaSardo! He's great in everything he does. He brought a sense of realism in a film that seemed anything but.

It's for these two reasons that I give the film 6/10.

Su doesn't wait until the opening credits are over before launching his first zombie attack, and they're consistently red in tooth and claw throughout. This is a B movie, sure, but Bridge of the Doomed fits neatly into the world of Max Brooks and World War Z, updating World War II scenarios to the zombie apocalypse. And this IS a creature feature, because there's something way worse than zombies under that bridge, and it's a proper old-school monster like the one in Michael Mann's The Keep. While this Mahal Empire production doesn't have the expensive studio sheen of ventures like the Dawn of the Dead remake, it's a busy, energetic combat movie that doesn't put many booted feet wrong. And yes, although his character is largely off-screen, Paré comes in swinging with LaSardo for the climax, barrelling in like he's Burt Lancaster and leaving this critic one satisfied customer.