Land of the Dead

J

John Uskglass

Venerable Relic of the Wastes
It was short. Way too short.

Review....SPOILERS!



George A. Romero's a pretty smart director/writer from a generation of pretty smart directors/writers. Like all his movies, this film heaps on the satire and the macabre humor; we have Dennis Hopper playing the demonized, corrupt President, who taunts the ordinary people with images of Fiddiler's Green, an extremely upscale apartment complex with shopping mall. This living elite sustains themselves by raiding the surrounding areas for food and material (though I assume it must be close to self-sufficient, given that there seem to be a lot of people), though questions remain as to how exactly their economy works.

The first part of the movie seems almost more like Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (without the Actress/Diva That Shall Not Be Named); the people of the earth seem alien to this dead world, only instead of a world rendered dead by atomic warfare, Land's world is dead and walking around trying to eat people. Personally, I wish there was a lot more of this; I love Post-Apoc settings, and this is the first one I have seen in a long time that was actually intriguing and well done. Zombies are a part of everyone's life in Land: beautiful women go to Clubs to take their picture taken with two chained zombies (played by the lead actors of Shaun), and zombies fight each other over food for sport.

Out of this corrupt bastion of the living we have four major characters; Riley, played by the talented Simon Baker, Cholo, played by the talented and occasionally annoying John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper as Kaufman, the semi-fascist dictator and the oddly beautiful Asia Argento as Soldier-turned-Prostitute slack. Most of these characters are interesting, and have the uniquely Romero cool lines, yet there seems to be a lack of characterization, thought that feels more like there's just not enough screen time for them then anything else. They are all more interesting then the main characters in most of the other Zombie movies (a sign that Romero is evolving like his beloved zombies), but Romero wastes much of his precious time with attempts to characterize the Zombies; something, I am afraid, is in vain, as the most any zombie ever does is scream or chew.

I liked the movie a lot. Besides being the best of the recent Zombie-film resurrection (well, in my opinion it shares that with Shaun, but not everyone believes it is a strict zombie movie ;) ), it creates a world of near constant dread and one that, despite the rather uninteresting majority populace, never fails to bore or not intrigue.
 
A-

I felt that it could've been 20-30 minutes longer, it rushed towards the climax way too quickly. I have a feeling Romero was probably urged to keep it around 90 minutes, though, as today's moviegoing audience aren't really prepared to sit through 2-2 1/2 hours of corpses chewing on intestines.

The gore was well done (I, for one, am never getting my naval pierced), the characters were fleshed out well, and the setting was terrific. I loved that the people in the ritzy skyscraper were drinking Tang like it was champagne.

Aside from the length/rushed climax, the only other problem I have is the use of CGI. It was used sparingly, but when it was used, I noticed it. Squibs > CGI.

Anyway. I'm just glad that Romero is making zombie flicks again...and I hope to see another one soon.

Edit - the throwbacks to the Day of the Dead soundtrack, and Tom Savini's cameo as the biker from Dawn of the Dead were much appreciated.
 
I give it a B-

I would have liked to have seen how the world ended up as it did drawn out a little more, rather than the way they did little blurbs on it and then, "Today".

I agree it was rushed overall and should have been about an hour longer to draw out the plot.

As for naval piercing...yeah, I know what part you are talking about.

Anyway, the gore factor and enirvonment were good.
 
«ºTone Caponeº» said:
I agree it was rushed overall and should have been about an hour longer to draw out the plot.
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...and yet you didn't like the original Dawn of the Dead. You're so weird.
 
Malkavian said:
«ºTone Caponeº» said:
I agree it was rushed overall and should have been about an hour longer to draw out the plot.
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...and yet you didn't like the original Dawn of the Dead. You're so weird.
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I watched the original Dawn of the Dead again 2 nights ago. It is lame. The problem is that the zombies in the original are completely impotent-even more so than those in Land of the Dead. How those could take over the world even in huge numbers would be beyond me.

The remake of Dawn of the Dead is easily the most convincing and actually takes some time to set up the plot (the "why is this happening"). It's not that I have to be thoroughly convinced in a sci-fi or horrow flick, but it sure helps if the movie can make connections.
 
I watched the original Dawn of the Dead again 2 nights ago. It is lame. The problem is that the zombies in the original are completely impotent-even more so than those in Land of the Dead. How those could take over the world even in huge numbers would be beyond me.
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Epidemic. The outbreak happened literally overnight, and from the graveyards to the suburbs and the inner cities, more and more people would become infected. This is something that has never happened before, and civil services would be hard-pressed to prevent the outbreak as people become unexpectedly bitten by their loved ones.

Eventually the whole thing gets out of hand, and you have essentially anarchic, rioting conditions. Only in this case, rioting is literally infectious, and is happening everywhere.

It doesn't matter how fast the zombies can move, as long as they were close to a large amount of people in the first place. The remake made this seem more plausible by implying that the outbreak originates from disease, and that people have to die from the contagion before becoming undead. In this case, the people that initially die from the disease are in a better position to infect those around them, because there wouldn't have been bizarre extraneous circumstances like being "mugged" by a guy in a Thriller costume. =/
 
Bradylama said:
Epidemic.
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Exactly. Things happened so suddenly that no one knew how to deal with it. I mean, really, is there a government contingency plan for sudden zombie outbreak? They thought they had it under control towards the end of Night, but that was only the first wave. In the beginning of Dawn, you see that people are trying to keep some order in the world, but due to the overwhelming amount of zombies and the generally unprepared populus, nothing could be done.

It all comes down to preparedness. And no one was prepared. It's not that easy to put a bullet in the face of your best friend, zombie or not.
 
That's true, though it's important to specify the situation. After you're aware that they're zombies, sure. It gets a lot easier. However, there's a long window of time where people have no idea that there's going to be a malicious intent. That's more than enough time for the infected to reach epidemic proportions, gathering together and basically tearing up the joint.
 
Bradylama said:
That's true, though it's important to specify the situation. After you're aware that they're zombies, sure. It gets a lot easier. However, there's a long window of time where people have no idea that there's going to be a malicious intent. That's more than enough time for the infected to reach epidemic proportions, gathering together and basically tearing up the joint.
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Exactly. I would say probably a month or two, maybe more, of complete chaos, before people get a grip on things. That's more than enough time for the majority of damage to be done.
 
You know, even if a majority of damage had been done in say 2 months, I still see Humanity winning in the long run. I mean, at some points, the zombies just have to degrade, and they certainly are not gaining signifigantly in numbers, while we always will.
 
That's the thing, though. Romero Zombies don't wear out like they do in 28 Days Later.

That creates problems. =/
 
Well, would'nt they still have to just biodegrade though? Maybe over a course of centuires, but some of them were obviously rotting. At that point, however many people are left come back and take over.
 
In the remake of Dawn, you do have a lot of cases of zombies going through stages of decomposition. However, in Day of the Dead, the zombies just seemed to keep on ticking well past their natural expiration date.

With City, they seem to have continued in that vein, where the zombies don't decompose, they just get uglier. =/
 
That's not entirely true. Look at that one in the garbage dump. I think some of the less decomposed ones where simply newer.
 
-A

I'm a big fan of George Romero and I thought the movie was played out very well. I would have liked to see more characterization however but the characaterization of the zombies was something new that he brought to the table. I have been reading and if this brings in enough money to the box office Romero may possibly do a second one or in his words a second-part to Land of the Dead.

With zombie movie I always like having the gore, the only thing that saddened me is there was no news clips. I understand that its after all of this distruction but its always fun to see what is actually all going around in their world. You would think they would have some type of propaganda to keep their moral up?

One last thing, George Romero has also been thinking of starting a series of zombie games which would be awesome. I've always wanted to play a post-apoc world zombie RPG lol. Anyhow, kudos to Romero for reviving the Zombie genre!
 
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