Land Of The Dead

Land of the Dead is an ambitious movie that ultimately manages to fail in most of its aims.

Superfically it's the 4th in George Romero's zombie movies. Mankind has been all but eliminated and is forced to live in walled cities and make raids on the small towns which were abandoned years before to get supplies. There is no mention of what will happen when they run out of towns to raid.... The rich live in great luxury while the poor subsist on scraps and are kept happy with "bread and circuses."

Unfortunately the zombies are starting to become sentient and learn to use tools and weapons just as the most powerful weapon in the city's arsenal is stolen by an unhappy minion....

Ok, it's a zombie movie, but the zombies are extraneous to the plot which is more about the relationship between the rich and poor in a post-apocalyptic society. Dennis Hopper plays a creepy gangster cum leader and John Leguizamo is always convincing but there is no motivation for any character in this film. Why would Leguizamo destroy an entire city because he can't get the apartment he wants? His character is neither crazy nor evil so his actions make no sense. Why is Riley, the good guy, so good? Why does he do his job? Why does he want to leave? Why does the female lead suddenly decide to help Riley out? What's in it for her? Nothing.

Then there's the political threads. The zombies do make an effective symbol in that Romero uses them to suggest that anyone who has may one day not have - e.g. anyone can sustain a bite. There's a suppressed revolutionary group who want Riley to help them so that wealth can be more evenly distributed but they warrant about 2 minutes of screen time. Why even write it into the plot if you're not going to use it?

Romero started out with some interesting ideas but completely fails to explore them. The organized zombies, not explained. The ability of humans to sustain themselves for years without means of planting crops, manufacturing, etc. - not explained, yet some people do live in vast luxury just like before. The motivations of the characters - not there. The development of various plot threads, noon-existent.

Don't get me wrong, it was an entertaining 90 minutes of film, but it wasn't very scary, and it just left me wondering where the other half of the story went.

George A Romero has returned to his zombie film series for the fourth time, with perhaps his greatest and most ambitious movie yet.

In the last film, Day of the Dead (1985), military and scientific communities were presented as the real menace to society, as zombies outside the compound began to be realised as sympathetic victims. This theme continues in Land Of The Dead, as the cult director offers his most complex and political vision of society. The zombies are now a sad underclass living outside a walled city, run by a rich elite, overseen by the presidential Kaufman, a gangster come politician, played with gravitas by Dennis Hopper in his best role for years.

Meanwhile the middle and working classes fight for scraps in communities fuelled by drugs and other vices.

These include a bunch of fighters who work for Kaufman, scavenging for supplies in towns swarming with zombies. This dirty and dangerous work is getting dirtier and dangerous by the minute, as the zombies are getting hungrier and learning to manipulate tools, weapons, and organize themselves. Things get even more dangerous when the status quo is threatened further, when one of the mercenaries Cholo (John Leguizamo) is double-crossed by Kaufman and turns on his boss threatening to bomb the city. It is left to his colleague Riley (Simon Baker), the moral hero figure, to save the day.

The pace to this film is relentless, with constant scary tension and downright gruesome action transfixing you to your seat, including the occasional blood fest. The plot, which could be so formulaic in other hands, is also continually gripping, largely as a result of the understated performances and the layers upon layers of social and political observation that Romero piles on.

Hopper, especially, excels and there are nice references to 'not doing deals with terrorism', 'jihad'; as well as numerous in-jokes, one liners, and references to the previous films, including an appearance towards the end of special effects wizard and long-term Romero collaborator Tom Savini, reprising his biker role from Dawn Of The Dead - however, this time back as a zombie.

This is one of the best examples of a great piece of cinema masquerading as a B movie I have seen in a long time. A terrific entertaining piece of cinema, which although ostensibly just a genre movie, manages to work on all kinds of different levels.