Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'! Hey guys, Quint here currently sitting in the Austin airport with about half an hour to kill before my flight to Newark (then a short jaunt over to New York) at some ungodly hour of the morning. I'm running on about 3 hours of sleep, so if this review is shitty then I apologize.
So, I saw a new Romero zombie movie last night and I'm still thinking about it, mulling over my feelings. As a Romero geek, especially a Romero zombie geek I'm still super psyched to finally see the gore that has been missing from recent horror movies the kind only Romero can deliver. As a Romero traditionalist, I'm also trying to adapt to this film. It's a new type of Romero film, one that's just as different from DAY OF THE DEAD as DAY was different from DAWN and DAWN different from NIGHT.
A part of me would almost prefer non-studio Romero. That's not to say you can see studio interference on the screen. Quite the contrary. The gore is strong enough to turn most studio execs' noses up, the political commentary is quite anti-rich and anti-Bush... Despite the image that LA has as a movie town, it's one of the most conservative cities I've been to. You have to remember that the studios are big business, the execs all on six figure salaries. The artists are the liberal face, but the heart of the city is as conservative as you'll find in America. Plus the main idea is to not rock the boat, don't risk your position by polarizing your whole paying audience.
So, Romero's spirit and his current political commentary is there in full force. In the film, the rich of the world (provided they are white) are allowed to buy their way into a false sense of security in an insecure world. They can buy a place in Fiddler's Green, a towering sky-scraper in the heart of Pittsburgh. Inside Fiddler's Green there are restaurants, shopping malls and every luxury you can buy.
The poor and not-white live in the protection of the city (bordered on 3 sides by rivers and by a long string of electrified fence and tall walls on the land side), but are living in poverty. It is through this populace that the rich stay in their caviar, wine and temperature controlled habitat. The people from the slums volunteer for the dangerous job of exiting the city to raid abandoned towns for supplies that are supposed to benefit the entire community, but as per usual mostly ends up in the pockets or on the plates of those in Fiddler's Green. They get perks, sure, but still are not worthy enough citizens to earn the right to buy a place in the big tower.
Without getting deeper into the plot (or politics for that matter) all this is told as a zombie story. You can look at it as a hardcore gore flick and ignore the politics, you can revel in Dennis Hopper's "We don't negotiate with terrorists" line or you can step back and look at is as more than a critique of an administration, but of human nature itself. Society has always favored the rich and depended on the working class.
Getting back to the beginning, when I say I'd almost prefer Romero to have stayed outside the studio system, I mean more in him having the resources to make a sharp looking picture. This movie looks nice, however I miss the grain of the first 3 films, the grittiness of them. This isn't a bright picture, but it's certainly not as raw.
This is a different Romero zombie movie, but I have come to expect that from Romero. It's one of the charms of his series. Neither is like the film before it.
Oop... they're boarding for Newark. I'll finish this up in New York...
Actually, I'm now on the plane, some 30,000 odd miles up. As luck would have it I actually have an empty seat next to me, for once, so I actually have the room to open up my powerbook and type the rest of this sucker out... now where was I?
Oh, yes... This is a different Romero film... this seems a lot more story driven than the character studies of the first three. In NIGHT, DAWN and DAY drama and events happened to move the characters from one point to another, for sure, but here it's more traditional in most aspects. From the opening credits on this feels like a more polished and traditionally structured film.
What keeps Romero's spirit alive through this more conventional structure are his characters. At the beginning I didn't warm to either Simon Baker's Riley or John Leguizamo's Cholo, but they're not instantly lovable characters themselves. Cholo is in it for himself only and Riley is the more stoic hero, in it for the good of all... at least for the time being. He's tired of the system and wants out, away from both zombies and the surviving scum of humanity.
The moment Asia Argento shows up the movie gets an almost electrifying shock of life. Asia has a talent for appearing either sluttily sexy or cute as a button adorable and she's in her adorable mode here. I was worried they were going to try to give her the Michelle Rodriguez/Vasquez treatment... make her a trash-talking almost macho ass-kicker. While she is good in a fight and at killing the undead, she keeps her femininity and vulnerable nature so you feel for her when jeopardy surrounds the group. You want her to live more than all the main characters... save one... but I'll get to him in a minute.
Dennis Hopper's Kaufman has been getting pretty lukewarm reception in a lot of the early reviews, but I loved Hopper in this movie. He has one of the best moments in the film, actually... I won't spoil it, but it's a great out of left field moment towards the end of the flick. He's a slimy, greedy douche-bag of a man, but I thought Hopper played the part with enough humor to not out and out despise him... Well, you sort of still do, but like in a Burke from ALIENS way. You love to hate him.
The two stand-outs of the film are Robert Joy as Charlie and Pedro Miguel Arce as Pillsbury, the huge Samoan badass that starts off as the eyes of Kaufman on the main mission of the film, but you know right from his entrance that he's too cool to be that square's lackey. Pillsbury rules. He's funny, he's tough and he's got heart. I loved this character. Although, he does come in second to...
Charlie. This fire-scarred puppy-dog of a person steals the movie. When he first pops up we think he's a zombie and we're not alone. He almost gets popped by a green rookie out on his first raid at the very beginning of the movie. At first I didn't think the character was going to work. He seemed almost retarded stupid instead of slow, but damn... He grew on me fast. By the time Asia is introduced and we get the interaction between Asia, Charlie and Riley I had come to like Charlie. By the time he explained why he wets the sight on his rifle I came to love this character.
He literally is a human puppy dog, loyal to and protective of Riley. If Riley tells him to protect someone, that person is protected. Yet Riley and Charlie's relationship somehow doesn't come off as a master/dog relationship. Riley has a love and respect for Charlie. At one point he tells Asia that Charlie has saved his life many times, Riley not even thinking of or wanting to take credit for doing the same for him.
Riley is played well, but is a bit uninteresting to me, a bit two-dimensional. Standard hero, but like I said he's played well. He's likable, but I found that I liked him more because I could relate to Charlie's loyalty to the man than because of anything super interesting done with his character.
Cholo is pure Leguizamo. There's a nice layering to his character. He could have easily become the villain of the movie, but with a few subtle character moments (like when he shoots the "Mexican Gardner" from the Dead Reckoning, the armored vehicle that is the center to the film) and Leguizamo's charm Cholo is always likable. I'll let you see it yourself, but I can say I was certainly surprised to find myself really liking this character since I didn't particularly care for him at the beginning of the movie.
We got the living covered. Now how about the dead? I think the learning zombie concept is going to turn sour for a select group of people, but I love the idea of the evolution. There's not a single zombie in the film that is as cool as Bub from DAY, but if Romero was going to stay true to his previous work he had no other option but to continue what he set up in DAWN with the slight memory the zombies had of the mall and continued with in DAY with the "education" of Bub. I feel going back to square one and having completely brainless fiends would undermine what he's set up previously.
Big Daddy, the lead zombie, the Bub of this story, works. I actually really love him watching what he'd consider his people getting slaughtered by yahoos safely protected by their armored transport and seeing how that affects him. He has a moment where he sees the Dead Reckoning go down his street gunning down dozens of his citizens. He sees the damage done and deep down he feels the need to protect his own and starts pushing down zombies, out of the line of fire. This could have come off cheesy, but it didn't.
The gore is nice, but let me say this... I can't wait for the director's or unrated cut on DVD. I think we're missing a lot. Not so much in terms of full scenes gone, but there is a lot of confusion to the zombie attacks now and I think a lot of that has to do with what Greg Nicotero revealed in the interview I did with him a couple days ago... where George had zombies walk back and forth in front of a greenscreen in order to pop them in to cross in front of some of the bits the censors would want to snip. That way the scene is still there and we still get glimpses instead of losing the scene completely.
I can't wait to see what the movie looks like without the censor-zombie-wipes. Censor Zombie Wipes... I just trademarked that, bitches! That's a baby's butt-wipe product name if I ever heard one.
The standout gore for me is glimpsed in the uncut trailer... where you can see fresh zombie soldiers eating newly dead... um... other soldiers in bloody and awesome ways.
All in all, LAND OF THE DEAD is a worthy addition to the series. I need to watch it a few more times to see where it ranks with the original three, which I've seen probably a couple dozen times each.
And if you think I'm going easy on the flick because I got to be a Romero zombie know that my scene is still in the movie, my friends who went with me can be seen, but it appears I had some unlucky placement as neither my friends nor I saw me on that screen last night. Yeah... why am I giving this movie a positive review? Fuck this movie! Take that, George! Maybe next time you won't cut me out, dammit!
hehe... I guess there's always freeze-frame when the DVD rolls around. So, you must go see this film this weekend. Nothing would make me happier than seeing this film open huge. If the crowd at the advance screening was any indicator then this flick will do really well. I hope so. George deserves some love. Plus... he put a midget in the movie... named Chihuahua... played by the scary little bugger from TROLL! Now that's just cool.
Alright. I finished this bastard and still have 64% battery power left on the laptop and SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT and CANNIBAL: THE MUSICAL (I must randomly love Trey Parker right now) music going through my iPod right now with just under 2 hours left to go on this flight. Good progress. I'll post this when I get into New York.
Look for my "Night of the Living Seaman" report which will hopefully get up before Friday, but I make no promises. My time in New York is already getting complicated and full. I'll give it a good effort, though. 'Til then this is Quint bidding you a fond farewell and adieu.
-Quint
