Land of the Dead (Unrated Edition)

5 STARS ALL THE WAY!
why should you buy this movie?
Asia Argento nuff said!

It's pretty rare I run into a post-apoc flick featuring zombies I don't like and this one was only very nearly an exception but even I had to reinflate my belief suspension waterwings a few times to handle the film's blatant, sometimes staggering stupidity.

Romero's reach for social commentary via the undead appears to have exceeded his grasp of how even a world where the dead come back to the life has to adhere to other rules that support the likely.

The rich are rich because they have the most cash? How does this compute in a post-apoc/post-federal reserve world with miles and miles of untended cash registers for the plundering?

What need was there for a highly unlikely heavily reengineered massive all-terrain assault vehicle built from the remains of a train engine when a military vehicle or something a little more A-Team/Mad Max would have sufficed?

I liked that he extended the idea of the zombies getting smarter first put forward in Day of the Dead as this could have some interesting ramifications for their origin, but it felt a bit silly and poorly executed.

That said, it's zombies. It's got Dennis Hopper. It's post-apoc. If that sounds like it's enough for you it probably is. But it doesn't hold a candle to contemporaries 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake.

When the moment i've been waiting for more than a decade finally arrived and passed, my heart was divided. The movie was great and i liked it as entertainment, but what about my zombie-film fan backup, the one that took me years to put togheter and get to love? Let's check the two usual and controversial points in Romero's "Living Dead" features, in this last version of the saga he invented:

-THE HORROR MOVIE: Great, spectacular, entertaining, creepy, menacing, disturbing, dark, atmospheric action and horror film after all. Romero's redemption finally arrived after his last and less effective "day of the dead" feature. In this movie, he manages to create the tense and gruesome atmosphere for the "End of the World" scenario he always wanted. We can apreciate from the first scene every detailed aspect of the Zombie apocalypse on the planet, the hopeless and despaired remaining humans living like rats, going outside armed to the teet looking for suplies ,shooting around like crazy cowboys, but breathing the zombie terror in every desperate minute. There is absolutely no hope. Humanity's fate finally came down in one of the most visceral and dark catastrophes ever portrayed on film. The gates of hell are open: behold the zombie hordes taking over the World.

Great fast-action horrific and tense story, simple and straight forward, in a great acomplished ambient anybody could possibly achieve for the zombie menace. The morbid tale with the right ambient finally came, but....

-THE ZOMBIE CULTURE: What is going on here? Is romero trying to take his mythology to a new level? I guess the professor's "Pet" Zombie and his experiments back in "day of the dead" were for real, at least for Romero. For me, Zombies don't have to necesary be the theme, only a mean to create terror, right? So what's this "social behaviour" thing going on between zombies, this new leadership issue and the "compassion" showed for each other? I know they move in groups, are helpful to each other and share the task to destroy humanity, but this is too much: Now, they are self-aware, they almost have feelings, they provide mutual colaboration, they use weapons instead of tools, they have a leader? They're still cannibal vicious creatures, thank god, but this new zombie society putted me down. No matter how many people they dismember and eat alive, i just can't get over the last scene:"they only want to be left alone, in peace" NOOOO... Why did they invaded the city in the first place? To get filled with human flesh and leave in peace? We're cool now? Maybe we are taken this issue too seriously.

Anyway, for the fantastic portrayal of the zombie apocalypse on earth , the struggle of the remaining mand-kind and the lost humanity in this new, raw, and cruel world, survival techniques and display of military power, for Tom Savini, the great story, and any implied social propaganda, thank you Romero.

For the zombie culture aspect, i guess in a few more years we will have to ask the zombies what's really going on. Don't mind me, this is a very entertaining film, i recomend it for anybody who's up for real chilling screams! Then you tell me if Romero was "eaten" by his own myth.

The DVD edition is great, the extras are much like endless humurous documentaries, but the interviews are interesting. Find out why the master did what he did. Enjoy the Uncut Edition or the Original theatrical edition, it's all good.

I've been a huge fan of George Romero for years. I can still recall the first time I saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was in Akron, Ohio, playing at the East Drive in at the bottom of a triple bill headlined by GIMMEE SHELTER with the Rolling Stones and PINK FLOYD LIVE AT POMPEII. But the real movie my cousins and I were there for was NIGHT. And the movie, though shot in black and white, still had a mind boggling lock on horror that made you look at cars around you to make sure you were all living.

Romero followed NIGHT ten years later with DAWN OF THE DEAD, what I consider his best zombie film. Seven years later came DAY OF THE DEAD. It's taken Romero 20 more years to finally return to his roots. And while the movie does rise above the more mundane releases in the genre, it failed to live up to my expectations.

The dead continue to rise and feast on the entrails of the living. People have banded together to protect themselves from the decaying corpses that are all around. A band of marauders out looking for food enter a town and with the help of a well adapted vehicle called Dead Reckoning, blast fireworks into the sky to hold sway over the zombies while they salvage what they can from the stores in the area. Led by Riley (Simon Baker), the group plays it safe, sticking to the plan and moving from place to place. With the exception of Cholo (John Leguizamo).

Cholo has plans of his own which include his rescuing liquor from a store. This in turn will earn top dollar for them when they return to the city. But things go wrong, a man goes down and the episode results in a minor confrontation between Cholo and Riley.

It's during this raid that Riley notices something different about the zombies. They are paying less attention to the fireworks. They are trying to communicate with each other. And while watching one who was a gas station attendant, he notices him respond to the bell from the drive, wanting to service a car. This means only one thing. The dead are now learning and thinking, making for a more deadly foe.

The city itself plays a major role in the film. On a triangular piece of land, it has river blocking two sides and an electrified fence on the third. Protection has its price though and the class system within the city rises above anything seen prior to the catastrophe.

Run by Dennis Hopper, a tower within these city walls features fine dining, clean living and entertainment galore. On the outside of the building though is squalor and starvation, people looking for entertainment in items like which zombie will destroy the other when fighting over a live human placed in a cage with them.

Riley and Cholo both have hopes of leaving the poverty stricken area below. Cholo by kissing up to Hopper with the hopes of moving into the tower, Riley by buying a car and heading to Canada where he expects to find fewer people living or dead. Cholo's plan goes awry when Hopper lets him know his services may earn him a better slot in life, but never occupation in the tower. And Riley's car is taken by Hopper's men. It's during his search for the man who sold him the car that Riley encounters the sporting event and saves the girl involved (Asia Argento).

Cholo goes wild, steals Dead Reckoning and trains its rockets on the tower in the middle of the city from outside the gates. Hopper offers Riley a chance to get his car back along with the friends he had with him if he will return Dead Reckoning and Cholo in one piece before the allotted time Cholo has given for his ransom to be answered.

The confrontation between the two as well as the power playing that goes on in Hopper's tower makes for a refreshing take on the whole zombie movie. Not content to live with just a story of flesh eating zombies, Romero has decided to show a society gone wild, where the poor stay poor and the rich continue to rise on their backs, figuratively and literally.

The best part of the film seemed to be the most downplayed. The zombies. Make up effects provided by KNB (is the K still included these days with the departure of Robert Kurtzman?) are fabulous. The zombies range from animated puppets to full costumed characters and each offer feelings that range from dread to humorous. They are what make this film. But we needed more of them, more involvement with them. The feature zombie that leads the rest, that thinks and makes them all the more dangerous, is great. And the concept of this makes the movie more terrifying as well. But less attention was paid to this and more to the city.

The feeling I had walking out of this film was one of disappointment. While it was an entertaining film and would work well into the whole Romero/zombie mythos, it just didn't quite feel satisfying. There was no point that caused this feeling but it was there. Perhaps this was cause by the glut of zombie films that have arrived on the scene since the original. Perhaps it was the heat from the sun as I left the building. Perhaps it was the pasta I had for lunch before entering. Then again, perhaps it was just that the whole genre has begun to feel just a little tired.

Romero has always used his films to make social commentary without being too high handed. Each has offered a subtle glimpse into the problems facing those of us in the US and moving around the world. This has made his movies much more than simple horror films. And this one does that idea justice.

This movie sucks! I think it's time for old Georgee to retire. Dawn remark is for the best compire to this garbage. If you like zombies film stay with George's classics.