Review #144: Land of the Dead (2005)

Cast/Notable Credits:
George Romero (Director)

Simon Baker (Riley): Red Planet (2000), The Ring 2 (2005)

John Leguizamo (Cholo): The Happening

Dennis Hopper (Kaufman): Speed (1994), TCM 2

Asia Argento (Slack): xXx (2002), Mother of Tears (2007)

Robert Joy (Charlie): The Hills Have Eyes

Eugene Clark (Big Daddy): Stir of Echoes 2 (2007)

Joanne Boland (Pretty Boy): Saw 4

Tony Nappo (Foxy): Saw 2, Saw 4

Jennifer Baxter (Softball Girl w/ #9): Frequency (2000), Dark Water (2005)

Shawn Roberts (Mike): Skinwalkers

Boyd Banks (Butcher Zombie): Jason X

Tom Savini (Machette Zombie)

Pedro Miguel Arce (Pillsbury): Are We Done Yet? (2007), Stepbrothers (2008)

Trailer:


Tagline:
“The Dead shall inherit the Earth”

Plot:

Some time ago, a zombie apocalypse had destroyed much of the human race. The dead greatly outnumber the living. The remaining survivors have barricaded themselves in the city of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is surrounded by a river on three of its sides which provides protection for zombie attacks. On the remaining side, fences (including electric) and gates have been installed to provide safety from that direction.

One of the survivors, Paul Kaufman, has built up the city in many ways. Kaufman was the architect behind the construction of the fences and even financed and trained his own army for the city’s protection. Kaufman created a government like system which allows him to rule the city through his built up wealth.

Trenched in power and “calling all the shots”, Kaufman (pictured right) had created his own society which ultimately divided the people into the rich and poor. The rich and powerful live in the center of the city in a large skyscraper named Fiddler’s Green. Fiddler’s Green has been equipped with all the luxuries in life. Only a select few are allowed to live in Fiddler’s Green.

The poor…live on the streets in poverty surviving on the “hand me down” leftovers from the wealthy. Most of them turn to gambling and prostitution as ways to survive and pass time. Sounds a lot like Vegas, doesn’t it?

Kaufman has employed two types of military branches; one of them provides protection in the city. The second unit is comprised of mercenaries that ran sack towns outside of Pittsburgh for supplies and dump the garbage from Pittsburgh. The group that scavenges through towns for supplies have the luxury of having a heavily armored vehicle named Dead Reckoning.

Dead Reckoning was financed by Kaufman and designed by Riley Denbo who also operates as the vehicles commander. With Dead Reckoning at his disposal, Riley heads up a strike force that can easily venture out in the world of zombies and travel through cities looking for food, medical supplies and other supplies for the inhabitants that live in Pittsburgh.

The zombies that roam the Earth have basically brought back aspects from their previous lives. They harmlessly wander the streets carrying items from their past…cheerleader holds pom poms, butcher carries a knife, band members attempting to play their instruments, etc. etc. They almost are at the primitive level of reasoning and comprehension.

During a mission into one of the surrounding cities, Riley and company upset a local civilization of zombies by stealing their stuff and killing some of them. The apparent leader of the zombies and former gas station attendant, named Big Daddy, effectively communicates with his fellow zombie citizens through a series of moans and groans to lead them on a quest to Pittsburgh in efforts to carry out revenge on the survivors.

Kaufman eventually pisses off the wrong person (Cholo DeMora) and Dead Reckoning is stolen from him. Cholo escapes the city and points a Dead Reckoning’s missile at Fiddler’s Green to threaten Kaufman. Kaufman in turn employs Riley to hunt down Cholo before a midnight deadline.

Mix in some good ole’ fashion American greedy back stabbing along with a revolt of social class and top it off with some revenge seeking zombies, we get Romero’s fourth installment of zombie apocalypse called Land of the Dead.

Villain:

Slow moving, and slow thinking zombies (short bus zombies?) star as the villains in Land of the Dead. Continuing along the story lines from Day of the Dead, Land takes the notion of zombies re-establishing thinking fundamentals to a new level.

In Day we had Bub picking up things and primitively knowing how to use them. In Land the zombies effectively have evolved and now are able to use some of the tools given to them for destruction. The zombies somehow have developed a way to communicate through moans and groans.

The leader of the zombies is Big Daddy (played by Eugene Clark...pictured left). Big Daddy is a big ole’ pissed off black guy who just wanted to be left alone pretending to work the gas pumps at his service station. Then the surviving humans came along and stole some sh*t and killed some of his zombie customers. The end result forced Big Daddy to go on a revenge tour with some friends.

Cast:

The featured cast is headlined by three characters, Riley, Kaufman and Cholo DeMora. Riley is played by Simon Baker and is the down to Earth “Robin Hood” of the survivors. Riley is commander of the strike force that searches rural towns for supplies. He is respected by the rich and poor because he does the missions for the benefit of the race, not for the greed that can accompany it.

Riley has worked for Kaufman for years and has saved up enough money to purchase his own car and drive north away from everything. Kaufman doesn’t like the idea of Riley “retiring” so Riley’s car has mysteriously disappeared leaving him trapped in the city with everyone else.

Kaufman (played by Dennis Hopper) is the greedy, sleazy, a-hole in charge of the whole operation. He essentially is the Godfather using the mob to carry out his needs. Kaufman’s character is the example of how power and money corrupts an individual.

John Leguizamo (pictured left) plays Cholo DeMora, the second in command of the Dead Reckoning squad. Cholo has become greedy on his strike missions by stealing “higher end” goods such as alcohol and cigars to sell them back to Kaufman and others. Cholo had become Kaufman’s go to guy when asked to “take out the garbage” on Kaufman’s enemies.

Cholo has mistakenly envisioned himself as living as one of the elites in Fiddler’s Green. Once Kaufman dismisses his dream and orders him dead, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning and holds Kaufman and the city at ransom.

Rounding out the cast are other key members, Slack (Asia Argento) and Charlie (Robert Joy). Riley saved Charlie from a fire and the two have become best friends. During the fire, Charlie was deformed leaving him with one good eye to see out of. Charlie’s a good shot with the gun and a little “slow” with the words, but overall he is a likable character.

Slack was a hooker that ruffled the wrong feathers. She was captured and thrown into a zombie cage match so the locals could gamble on the winner. Before the zombies could eat her, Riley saved her and ultimately “clinged” onto Riley’s side.

SFX/Gore:

Land of the Dead is Romero’s first zombie film to benefit from modern day special effects. Not everything was CGI; in fact Romero didn’t want to use a whole lot and stayed true to the old fashion effects. Modern technology was used to produce a few things and give the film a nice polish to it.

The zombies in the film were once again top notch looking in their make-up. There were a “few” gallons of blood used in the film, but it wasn’t as dramatic as many of his past movies. Romero stayed within the boundaries of killing people (and zombies ripping apart bodies). I do have to say that there was one fake looking thing in the movie. I’m sure if you see the film, you’ll catch it. Hint: it had something to do with a body and grenade explosion.

The best part about the special effects in the film happened to be the vehicle Dead Reckoning. Dead Reckoning is bad *ss! Dead Reckoning is the product of something the A-team would have made if given a RV, metal, blow torches and a lot of military weapons. It’s pretty damn cool looking. Dead Reckoning is armed with heavy remote-controlled machine guns, rocket launchers and video cameras.

I considered calling Dead Reckoning a character, because it stole the show in my books. If there were a zombie apocalypse, Dead Reckoning is a vehicle that you would want to seriously want to think about constructing…or something along the lines of it. I thought that Romero could have used Dead Reckoning a little bit more, but that’s probably just me. I could…would…watch a movie that just featured Dead Reckoning f*ckin’ up and killin’ zombies.

TNA:

Because Land of the Dead portrayed its surviving city as a slum and “Sin City” we got a little taste of some seedier lifestyles…prostitution. Of course that led to a gratuitous tit shot or two. Yeah!

Center piecing the eye candy of the film was Asia Argento (pictured below). Argento wore some less than appropriate Sunday church clothing but there’s nothing wrong with women wearing fish-net stockings and boots. I’m cool with that. Argento also parades around in the film with some skimpy clothing and shows a lot of her tattoos and skin.

On a trivial side of things…did you know that Asia is the daughter of Dario Agrento? Dario is the famous Italian horror movie director which some of his cult hit films include Suspiria, Deep Red and Inferno. He’s the considered the master of gore in Italy. Dario has also collaborated with Romero many times in the past. Now we can say that he has contributed two great things to society, his bloody movies and hot daughter.

T.Gun’s Take:

What did I think of Land of the Dead? I dug it. I was glad to see Romero come back to the zombie industry after a twenty year (or so) hiatus. It was nice to see him put his stamp back on the zombie world after the introduction of the wild, heat seeking, and rapidly moving super zombie. It was an attempt to bring us back down to Earth.

Romero seems to send us social messages in his zombie movies. In Land of the Dead, Romero orchestrated a great social class struggle. The have’s versus the have not’s. What would people do if given power, and money? How would the less fortunate react? I thought Romero did a great job demonstrated that conflict in Land of the Dead.

I know there are people out there who didn’t like this movie, but I enjoyed it. Romero did a good job with his characters, as he always does. The job wasn’t as great as he did with Dawn, but overall I liked the cast. Dennis Hopper was terrific as the greedy dick head, and the others did a well enough job for me not to hate them. There was some great side “one-line” humor in the film brought to us by the supporting cast…especially the big Samoan dude, Pillsbury.

There was one detail that I thought was a little odd, the year of the apocalypse. Watching the movie, there is no way in hell that these were the events that followed any of the original trilogy’s events. First of all, the technology was a bit to new for the events to be following the originals. Dead Reckoning is a perfect example of that. GPS locating system? Not in the 60’s. Also the film featured walkie talkie cell phones. Again…not in the 60’s. Would that stuff still work?

Secondly, I was a little confused when Riley was questioning Slack about being on the outside of the city walls. She said that she was born in the city and never made it outside. Did the world end a long time ago and she’s been in the city for twenty-some years? If that was true, then the technology argument doesn’t make sense. Or was she just a city slicker that never made it to the suburbs?

Outside of those little things, I loved the film. I saw it in the theaters when it came out and I was overall pleased. I thought that Dead Reckoning stole the show (and it did!). After watching Land on DVD many times since, I’ve grown to appreciate the film more. Romero’s got at least one more “…of the Dead” on the way …perhaps “Island”? But for now here are my rankings of Romero’s zombie flicks:

1. Dawn of the Dead
2. Night of the Dead
3. Land of the Dead
4. Day of the Dead
5. Diary of the Dead

Misc. Movie Trivia:
-Film opened on June 24, 2005 and made $26 million at the box office ($10.2 million opening weekend)
-Based on the original script for Day of the Dead (1985)
-Rumored alternative titles: Twilight of the Dead, and Dead Reckoning
-Hopper & Argento both starred in the 2004 movie, The Keeper