Director: George A. Romero
Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper
IMDB: 6.3
RT: 74
Box Office: $46.7 Million (Worldwide)
Summary-
After the zombies have taken over the world, civilization survives within a walled city. There is a divide between the rich who live in a luxurious tower and the poor who live in the streets. A group of people attempt to threaten the wealthy just as the zombies breach the city.
Review (Spoilers)-
Romero returns to the zombie genre for the first time in 20 years with this film. It seems to have received decent reviews although significantly worse than his original trilogy. I didn't really care for this film for a number of reasons that will be explained below.
The film opens with Riley Denbo (Simon Baker) and his group of people doing a supply run for their community. He is clearly in charge but Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) seems to be a threat to that. Cholo goes to pick up some alcohol that he can sell and in the process one of the people with him is bitten. This continues to increase the tension between Riley and Cholo. After they gather their supplies they head back to the community led by an armored vehicle called Dead Reckoning.While they are leaving you start to see that some of the zombies are becoming more intelligent and they begin to follow the survivors after they leave. This scene was okay although I could immediately tell that I was not going to like any of these characters.
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| Dead Reckoning |
The group of people return to their community which looks like Pittsburgh. The city is run by a group of elite rich people that live in a luxury building called Fiddler's Green. The rest of the people have pretty shitty living conditions and watch zombie fights and gamble for fun. There is a pretty overt political message about the Rich taking advantage of the poor in this film. Cholo brings some booze up to Kaufman (Denis Hopper) who is the guy in charge of this community. Cholo is owed a lot of money by Kaufman and hopes to be able to move into Fiddler's Green but Kaufman turns him down. Cholo proceeds to steal Dead Reckoning and take it out of the community and threatens to launch some missiles at the Fiddler's Green if he isn't paid a bunch of money. This just seems really stupid, what the hell are you going to do with money if you leave the only community that uses it? It's just such a stupid idea! Of course what is even worse is that Kaufman refuses to pay because he doesn't negotiate with terrorists. I would have just given the guy money since it is pretty much just useless pieces of paper but everyone in this movie is an idiot. Dennis Hopper gives a pretty shitty performance as the human villain of the movie as well.
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| Zombies crossing the river |
So Kaufman sends Riley with his friend Charlie, a hooker named Slack and a couple of goons that work for him to go and stop Cholo. While all of this is going on the zombie horde is slowly moving towards their community. Riley and his group are able to stop Cholo but by the time they do that the zombies have broken into their community. They try to save the people but everyone is pretty fucked. This is where you get all of your good zombie scenes but the plot is just so stupid that I didn't care.
Final Thoughts-
This was a huge letdown after watching the old school Romero zombie films. Sure it has a few good moments but this is by far the worst written one that I have seen (I have not watched Diary of the Dead or Survival of the Dead). I hated all of the actors in this film and didn't even like the zombies in it much either. This is pretty much just for die hard zombie and George Romero fans only.
MY RATING-
2 out of 5
-Chris "Da Franchize" Hart
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