Land of the Dead

A Review by Noah Antwiler

This isn't a zombie movie. This is an extended political commentary with zombies thrown in it. George Romero is known for making social satire with his previous films, but in Land of the Dead the subtext is the main-text, and it's all about as subtle as a sledgehammer. My expectations were low, and this movie managed to exceed them, but not by a whole hell of a lot.

Land of the Dead doesn't really fit in continuity with the rest of the series, and anyone who says different is kidding themselves. If it inherits the continuity of any movie, it's ironically closest to the Dawn of the Dead remake. You can tell because of the high level of technology evident in the film, far beyond what is seen in Night of the Living Dead (which featured blocky radios and black-and-white televisions, or even the more modern Day of the Dead. The characters in this movie are very modern, employing PDAs, GPS devices, state-of-the-art firearms, and cutting-edge communication devices.

Further, it doesn't really mesh with Day of the Dead in the sense that the movie takes place near a stronghold called Fiddler's Green, a skyscraper and its surrounding slums that represents one of several survivor holdouts. Another such place is Cleveland, I believe. We're led to believe in Day of the Dead that there's just nobody out there anymore, and surely if there were strongholds still standing they'd be able to receive long-range radio communications, and eager to accept new people.

Fiddler's Green has, apparently, managed to keep the whole zombie holocaust thing under a measure of control. They're well fortified, surrounded on its sides by water. The bridges are walled off, and the only way in is a death-trap. They're set, as long as a plucky group of mercenaries is able to raid the fallen cities for supplies. They do this in an armored Megaweapon vehicle called Dead Reckoning, a mobile tank bristling with rockets, machine guns, and fireworks.

Ooooo....sparkles...

Yeah, fireworks. The dead love 'em. "Oooooooh....Aaaaaaaahhhh....braaaaaaiiinnnnss...."

The leader of these mercs is perhaps the most generic milquetoast white hero ever to blunder into the apocalypse, Riley. He's a completely unrealistic optimistic do-gooder so bland that even he admits that he's got no interesting personal history to speak of. He dreams one day to move to Canada so he can experience an all-new kind of hell of being fucking cold all the time, and not watching hockey. There's nothing there, of course, which to Riley is exactly the point. He figures he can scrum himself silly on salvaged maple syrup until the day he dies.

Unlike his more conniving buddy Cholo, played by John Leguizamo, a man who desperately needs to be beaten with a wiffle bat. Oddly enough, this is probably his best (and not coincidentally, his most restrained) performance of his LIFE, and for once I liked him in a film. Cholo wants to move into Fiddler's Green, and he figures that since he's been doing The Man's dirty work for years, he's earned his spot.

Not so, says Mr. Kaufman, the administrator of Fiddler's Green. Kaufman represents the wealthy interests of white, white people, and the first of Romero's political themes. Naturally Kaufman doesn't want some working-class Latino bringing his jive-talk into Wonder Bread Land. There's no place for blue-collars or colored folk in the Republican Party-- I mean, Fiddler's Green.

Everyone inside the skyscraper is the (white) social elite, skimming the best of everything off the top and leaving everyone (not a WASP) outside to wallow in filth and depravity. Kaufman runs that too, behind the scenes. He has Cholo running in booze, and Kaufman runs the prostitution, drug, and liquor rackets to keep the unwashed masses pacified. Everyone in Fiddler's Green goes about life well-protected in their ivory tower, still doing the same inane brunches and shopping trips. They're blissful that as long as the zombie apocalypse is out of sight, it's out of mind. Enter political subtext #2. We pretend the rest of the world isn't suffering because we consciously ignore it.

I'm hard on conservatives, but I'm not much of a fan of this "we should care about everybody" liberal bullshit either. This subtext is really dropping on the audience like a ton of bricks.

Anyway, Kaufman tells Cholo to take a hike until he somehow becomes white and affluent. Slightly miffed, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning and holds the city ransom. He wants $5 million, but I really have to wonder what use cash is, considering there's no economy anymore. Kaufman, being the greedy little bastard that he is, thinks "Homey don't play dat" and responds "We don't negotiate with terrorists." (SUBTEXT! SUBTEXT! SUBTEXT!)

This movie has subtext?? No wai!

And if all that wasn't subtle enough for you, Cholo tells his buddies, "I'm gonna go jihad on his ass!" Just shoot me.

The rest of the movie is standard zombie-stalking fare. Riley goes to get Dead Reckoning back, most of the characters you think are dead meat die horribly, and the zombies manage to breach the defenses of the city when they learn how to use weapons, and realize that water is not a barrier to them. Even in this regard, Land of the Dead has long been surpassed by its imitators, and just isn't as good as the sublime Shaun of the Dead or even 28 Days Later. Sure, there are some creative kills here and there, and it's interesting to see the zombies evolve and even develop personality, but it's just all been done before and better.

The main message of the film is over-done and irritating, about the white man keepin' the brotha down. It's all over the movie. Kaufman has a simpering black manservant who leaves his massah to his comeuppance when the zombies come for him. The "leader" zombie is a working-class hulking black dude who feels rage at the exploitation and slaughter of his own kind.

The second key message is a ludicrous realization that the zombies are people too. Riley utters some of the dumbest Lucasian dialogue such as "Don't shoot. They're just looking for a place to go. Like us." or...

Must we overpoliticize this?

Buddy: "It's like they're pretending to be alive."
Riley: "Isn't that what we're doing?"

GAG. Just shut the hell up with this. They're zombies. They fucking eat people. Oh I GET what they're saying, that on a primal level we're all just animals. But it was much better said and MUCH more subtle in Aliens when Ripley said "You know Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."

There are some scares, and the movie is surprisingly effective considering its ham-fisted dialogue and plot. The ending is too cheery, and the plot is full of holes. There are no surprises here; everyone who is a goody-goody lives, and everyone who acts like an asshole will get eaten. Still, the production values manage to save what would have been an awful movie and there are some legitimately creepy moments, and even a cheer-filled cameo by Sex Machine. It's not really a bad movie, it's just not very good. And for Romero fans, it's sure to be a hell of a disappointing 90 minutes.

Some guy

I'm a Romero fan and wasn't disappointed by it at all. What I was disappointed with was Diary of the Dead however...

J-Naps

I liked Leguizamo's best was Summer of Sam, he was pretty restrained in that...by John Leguizamo standards.

This movie isn't great, but it kept my attention. It is basically good enough for a mindless zombie movie if you push all the political subtext out of the way...god forbid we have a zombie movie without it.

Raith

Not a big fan of zombie movies, but I hate when movies get all "preachy". I mean, it can be done, but it's gotta be done right. Wal-e was preachy as hell, but you gotta admit it was wrapped in such a great movie, you kinda let it slide and it didn't ruin the fun. And that line from Aliens was a great example too.

john.g

I can't believe you don't think Chi-Chi in "To Wong Foo" was Leguizamo's lifetime best!

Redbob86

Tam Lin, you have a well-thought-out opinion about the film, but I just want to say something about the last line:

"Considering how long this movie was in the making, it’s hard to think of how it could have been a bigger let-down."

I'm not certain exactly how long this movie was in the making, but based on the recent bad movie reviews I've been seeing over the last few months, I've started to notice a pattern when it comes to time. There are probably many exceptions ofcourse, but in my humble experience, the longer a film sits on the shelf, the more likely it is to be a dud. Films like "Pluto Nash" and "On Deadly Ground", according to Film Brain, had their original scripts on the shelf for 20 years. Revisions were made, ofcourse, but in the end all you are doing is having someone try to polish up someone else's script for an audience of 20 years ago, and in the end we don't have a strong story structure and instead someone's attempt at re-fitting one.

I belive Rocky and Bullwinkle also took 11 years before it was finally picked up, but I'm not going to count that one because I don't see any way you can make that idea work.

Films don't have to wait this long, ofcourse. Generally there are problems when films are delayed for sometimes just a few years, and suffer due to the crew becoming unethusiastic and putting less effort. This is what happened with The Punisher: War Zone. I know Spoony doesn't like the 2004 Punisher, but I enjoyed the film. Thomas Jane was perfect for the role, and there were good amounts of tension and action. Now it's sequel kept running into delays, so much so that Thomas Jane gave up and left the project, forcing them to find a replacement. This only added to the lack of enthusiasm amongst the film crew, and what we got was a boring, generic, and uninteresting sequel/remake/reboot....or something like that.

The same thing happened with the Wonder Woman live-action film. There is word that the film's going to be back in production, but based on the 5 or more years they wasted trying to get it started, I fear if the film is completed it will not be well. Writers kept leaving, which only lead to other members of the crew leaving, which only added to even more of a lack of enthusiasm. Joss Whedon was asked to write the screenplay, but quit due to what he percieved to be an uninterested crew. He said "The lack of enthusiasm was overwhelming", and he washed his hands of the project, which ofcourse only lead to more doubts amongst the rest of the crew.

Now I'm sure there are exceptions ofcourse, maybe cinematic masterpieces that spent a good deal of time on the shelf. I understand you can't rush art and quality, but if you let it drag on and on, fewer people are going to be enthusiastic about the project and instead wonder when this damn thing is going to be over with.

Tam Lin

Not to pick a fight in the comments (one of my pet peeves), but claiming that overt racism doesn't exist anymore is one of the single most naive statements I've heard in my life, ever. Sorry, but it's the truth.

Man was this movie a dissapointment. I didn't mind the political commentary, although I acknowledge that that game is thinner now than it was back in the 60s, but it was much harder to overlook the weakness of the script. The cast was a bland menagerie of caricatures and the central confict held no real suspense or interest, being basically just a literal ticking time bomb scenario.

Worst of all, the material with the zombies verged on a tragic farce. As if we're really supposed to care whether a bunch of dead people can learn to use a baseball bat again? The more human the zombies become, the less scary they are. Considering how tired and (begging your pardon) dead the zombie subgenre is these days, it would have been really nice to see Romero take it back to its roots and show us again why we used to care. "Land of the Dead" is a lot better than your average zombie movie...but that's a pretty low bar to clear these days. Considering how long this movie was in the making, it's hard to think of how it could have been a bigger let-down.

Tai MT

I tend to be a fan of the "Of The Dead" movies... But honestly, the characters in the more recent movies have tended to be less realistic.

Land of the Dead, according to previews, promised to be a kind of exciting movie. Zombies own the earth, the only way to survive is to raid smaller towns for supplies, and somehow shit hits the fan.

Instead, what I got was a political point of view disguised as a zombie movie.

I'm sorry, but it's not 1950 anymore. That kind of stereotypical racism just doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, racism does exist (affirmative action is pretty racist...), but not to the extent of Romero's portrayal. Not to mention, the racism was obviously just a plot device, because of the improbability of the people acting the way they did. If the world was really in ruin, and the top guy was a rich white guy with his own personal army and racist views... He wouldn't say, "oh well... I don't think you're our kind..." He'd say, "Listen you (insert racial slur here), I own this town, and everyone in it. Go to your own separate water fountain, get at the back of the bus, mow my lawn, and shut up. If you don't, I'll feed you to the zombies. Don't upset the status quo."

I would also like to know how zombies with extremely poor motor skills proved to be TOO MUCH for trained military personnel. To me, that has never made sense. Guys with guns, who train to use them, know how to kill a zombie... They get overwhelmed by slow moving zombies in the wide-open using melee weapons? Only the one zombie has a gun, and he sucks with it. It shouldn't be hard to put a round through his skull to end that threat and finish the rest of the hoard off in quick succession.

Anyway, that's enough from me. The movie is pretty much crap. It's okay for a few of the lines, but that's about it.

Redbob86

I never got around to seeing this movie, and after reading this review I'm glad.

I'm generally turned off by political messages in general, even if they agree with my own politics (which being a conservative, Hollywood pretty much NEVER does). And if you're going to have political themes, just be honest in your original presentation and don't try to sneak it in under the guise of something else.

However, I've also never been a big fan of zombie films in general, despite me and my friends having many MANY discussions on the pure biological boundaries (I'm a Science grad) of what exactly make up a zombie, as well as the various tactics on how to deal with a zombie outbreak (whether or not they can run, whether or not they can use weapons, whether or not they need flesh to survive and how long they can sustain themselves without feeding, etc). But these are more interesting thought experiments we like to do and they provide nice discussions.

This is why I liked reading the Zombie Survival Guide because of it's detailed description on various scenarios and possible tactics, but not so much the films because they tend to be pretty predictable and don't offer much in the way of study and discussion.

Mr. Sinister

I agree with Spoony wholeheartedly here. The movie was needlessly weighed down by Romero's armchair political "subcurrent", but when the preachiness died down, a surprisingly effective and scary zombie movie showed through. If Romero dialed it down a bit with the commentary, it would've been kickass.

Seth

The first time I saw this film it was being shown in the burger joint we have on campus at my college. While all the flaws you mentioned above are apt and completely true, like most horror films, it's always more fun in a group. It was at least an enjoyable experience for me.