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After the launch of Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of “Justice League” on HBO Max, the highly controversial director is set to take on Netflix with “Army of the Dead” which is premiering next week. The movie will be receiving a limited theatrical release on May 12. It is important to note Snyders work as a director of the revered ‘Dawn of the Dead’ that was released in 2004. It is baffling to think if Snyder can live up to Romero’s monumental career. Will his new release stretch across the immeasurable potential of Romero’s work? The answer is a complicated yes and no. Some components of Snyder’s aggressive new release do in fact live up to Romero’s previous work. Namely the ‘zombie headshot’ scenes. Yet, certain aspects like themes and character structure fall apart. The character design is muted and underwhelming and for a film that is not plot driven, it poses as a big contradiction to the core ideas of the movie.
The film definitely will interest Snyder fans and action movie lovers because it delivers on everything promised in the title which is ‘Army of the Dead’. This film, like many others in recent times, has faced some delays but hopefully it’s ready to release now.
The movie ‘Army of the Dead’ starts off quite interestingly with a scene involving a military convoy that crashes into a couple celebrating a wedding while driving down the Nevada highway. Their dialogue explains how the convoy comes from Area 51 and the items carried in it are so dangerous that even military-grade weapons will not make a difference. After the container holding the deadly material breaks, the soldiers who manage to survive become zombies and proceed to pour into Las Vegas, also known as the city of sin.
Accompanied by a cover of “Viva Las Vegas,” Snyder narrates a brilliant montage of the violence that took place next. Topless zombie showgirls chew on a man lying in a bathtub while zombies transform the casino floors into their playgrounds. What started off as innocent fun changed drastically when the military stepped in. With the intention of getting as many survivors out of the city as themselves, they wall off the entire city. The names of new major players are introduced in the credits actors such as Ward (Dave Bautista), Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), and Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) come to mind. They are three lucky soldiers with dead aim. However, after they adjust to life outside of the city, they do have to return to their blue-collar jobs. The worry now shifts to the new zombie king that runs the ‘Olympus casino.
So it makes sense that Ward pays attention when a rich man, Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), approaches him with an offer. There is $200 million locked in a safe deep in the ground somewhere in Las Vegas. Get a team, get the money, and leave before the government bombs the city. Ward’s new friends Cruz and Vanderohe are tandemly christened, and Cruz and Vanderohe round out the ensemble of Ward’s 11 which includes a safecracker (Matthias Schweighöfer), a social media star (Raúl Castillo), a helicopter pilot (Tig Notaro, taking over for Chris D’Elia, who filmed the movie and then got cut), Tanaka’s employee (Garrett Dillahunt), and even his own daughter Kate (Ella Purnell). There will be additional new characters, including a attention-stealing coyote (Nora Arnezeder) and a violent cop (Theo Rossi) Most of them will become food for the undead. (This is a spoiler only if you have not watched a zombie movie before. My apologies.)
“Army of the dead,” even with its unique duration, is a purposeful, streamlined film that combines elements of the robber and zombie genres.
Snyder’s co-written script has been added just enough new there and there, but I really hope there was a little more to the heist itself than simply going from A to Z (A to Zombie instead) and then trying to return to A again. At times, it seems that the plot of the movie “Army of the Dead” is a bare bone structure on which the action scenes are drafted instead of it being intelligent in and of itself. I personally was impatiently waiting for a twist or a surprise that never truly came.
The characters, even for a zombie action film, are very superficial – now it would have been nice if more compelling characters would have countered the story’s lack of creativity. Ward, for example, is only a father, chef and a soldier, that’s all the information that is provided. Bautista is an underappreciated and quite charming actor, but he simply has no idea how to make his character feel more dimensional. Still, he does better than De La Reguera and Hardwick, who are practically devoid of character. It is that type of movie in which ensemble cast outshines the stiff main actors because they add a certain level of dynamism to the movie, especially the great Dillahunt, Schweighöfer and Arnezeder. But where’s the harm in making it a little more lively by giving everyone some character traits? Some of the zombies in here have more developed characters than some of the humans do, for Romero’s sake.
There also seems to be a hint of Snyder attempting to engage in political and social issues without saying anything about them. A wall cutting a city in half to the extent that a coyote has to smuggle the team back into America? That’s politically sensitive and it is inescapable to view someone getting their temperature taken and not think about the world at present (even if there is no way to assume Snyder was able to foresee reality). The unfortunate thing is that these examples don’t really begin to amount to anything. They constitute parameters instead of notions, and that is very much the opposite of what Romero would say given how willing the master was to tackle concepts like the mindless consumerism and the military industrial complex in “Dawn of the Dead” and “Day of the Dead.” It is not as if it was vital for “Army of the Dead” to include those themes to enjoy it, but there is an intriguing quality to it that makes destroying them in the end more annoying than anything.
What works for “Army of the Dead” is that it’s fun and unpretentious and it doesn’t strive to be more than what it is. It is pretty evident that it is meant to draw inspiration from the director’s masterworks as well as the contemporary ‘fast moving’ zombie flicks such as “28 Days Later” and “World War Z”, and there are times where the sheer level of insanity just works because the large scale visions of the director and the complete willingness of the actors to obey him. These include a memorable zombie tiger, a bizarre mix of undying king and queen that sets the tone of the action, and the wonderful scene that involves brain eating zombies being used to trigger traps. These are some of many clever and fun aspects that keep “Army of the Dead” alive. Even though it is a few spins away from winning the jackpot, there is enough to make the movie hold together.
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