- Written and directed by George A. Romero
- Starring
- Simon Baker
- John Leguizamo
- Dennis Hopper
- Asia Argento
- Robert Joy
I will always wonder what a George Romero zombie flick made in the ’90s would have been like. The three entries in his “Dead trilogy,” released in 1968, 1978, and 1984, each carry a subtext beneath their terrific storylines that, while universal, does have particular resonance to the era of production. Night of the Living Dead overlays the drama of a handful of people trapped in a house with questions of social authority and gender-specific roles at a time when previous decades’ assumptions about those matters were being turned upside-down. Dawn of the Dead is the most blackly-ironic of the three, obliquely critiquing the “Me” Generation and the growth of suburbanized consumer culture. And Day of the Dead aims some pointed (and some might say unfair) criticisms of the stereotypical military mindset, while also pondering the role of civility in civilization.
Because Romero has always operated on the indie fringes of the motion picture industry, funding any project has always been a chancy proposition, and due to any number of piddling little factors, there was no Romero zombie movie in the ’90s. (Some might try to claim the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead as that decade’s entry, but I reject that claim because (a) while Romero did write the script, he handed the directorial chores off to Tom Savini; and (b) the remake was really underwhelming, both on the surface and on a subtextual level, and I’d rather not bring the entire loose franchise down by its inclusion.) It was only thanks to an upsurge of Hollywood interest in zombie movies in general, beginning at the turn of the century, that plans for a fourth Dead movie finally came together, resulting in Land of the Dead.
Fans had long expected any further sequel after Day to maintain the time-of-day motif of the previous films; I think most of them were expecting a Twilight of the Dead (or, more ominously, Twilight of the Living). Perhaps the break from the earlier titling schema is a subtle hint at other patterns broken here, for while Romero here crafts a solid and engaging piece of action-horror entertainment, this movie is far less concerned with pseudo-allegorical social critiques than its precedents. One might say that Land is more akin to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead than to the 1978 original.
After the movie opens with a black-and-white prologue meant to evoke the first movie of the series, we get down to the scenes that help us know where we are: It’s an indeterminate number of years since the dead started walking. One of the few successful human fortresses is built where a city was situationed on a spit of land sticking out into the river; a massive electrified fence across “the throat” guards zombie access from that direction, and the water cuts off the other two sides of the triangular haven. (As usual, the question of where ongoing electrical power comes from is never mentioned.) From that relative safety, small scavenger crews head out into the small towns roundabout for supplies.
But “small” doesn’t mean ill-equipped. Among the half-dozen vehicles that make up a scavenger mission, the centerpiece is a massive armed and armored carrier christened “Dead Reckoning” (incidentally, one of the early proposed titles for the movie). Dead Reckoning is largely the work of one man, Riley (Simon Baker), who has served as scavenger captain for several years, and is now looking to step down.
The natural candidate for his replacement is Cholo (John Leguizamo), but Cholo’s already got his next gig in mind. Along with his official duties, Cholo’s been doing “favors” for some rich people — picking up special “supplies” for them, and helping them get rid of undesirables. Cholo thinks he’s got enough saved up to get himself a place in the centerpiece of the survivor community: Fiddler’s Green, a private shopping center and condo community where the well-to-do have managed to continue a version of the ideal all-American consumerist existence — eating well, drinking well, and generally ignoring all the scabby commoners who scurry around the gutters at ground level. Alas, even after the zombie apocalypse prejudices linger, and Cholo is gently “locked out” by the man with whom he’s been currying favor, the most powerful man in the Green, Mr. Kane (Dennis Hopper).
I don’t know if I can really accept the idea that the ruling elite would have either the will or the resource to maintain their imitation Capitalist Paradise in this isolated skyscraper — I mean, the silk suits and the lobster would have to come from somewhere still. And any movie which posits that Dennis Hopper is the most powerful man left in the world has got some serious problems.
Anyway. Cholo decides to exact his revenge — and some blackmail — by stealing Dead Reckoning and aiming its missiles at Fiddler’s Green until he gets a bazillion dollars. (Excuse me, but even if we stipulate that greenbacks still have some value in this human fortress, once Cholo drives away with his loot and Dead Reckoning to find some other place to settle, what are the odds that the other survivors he finds will similarly maintain their reverence for those silly little pieces of paper?) And Riley, who had just barely retired, finds himself pressed back into service, to go out there and steal back Dead Reckoning from Cholo before Fiddler’s Green is obliterated. With him are his backup man Charlie (Robert Joy), a handicapped and burn-scarred fellow who nevertheless is a crack shot with his one good eye; and Slack (Asia Argento), one-time hooker who was rescued by Riley when someone decided to make her the bait in a zombie gladiatorial match.
Now, it may seem that the plot as described really doesn’t hinge on the zombies, and you’re right; the main storylines seems more appropriate for a generic post-apocalyptic setting, even one that doesn’t involve a sudden and drastic end to civilized infrastructure (I’m thinking of The Road Warrior (1981) here). That’s because I haven’t told you about the other subplot which begins almost in the first shot of the movie, and stays largely on its own separate track until the climax. While Dead Reckoning is out scavenging, Riley and Charley see a big bald undead gas station attendant who seems, ever so marginally, more intelligent than the rest. I’m not sure I’d even say he’s smarter than Bub the zombie from Day of the Dead, but he’s a little more aware than the average “stench”; and when the scavengers leave town, shooting zombies right and left, this single zombie tries to push other zombies out of the way of the bullets, and expresses rage at the loss of “his people” when they’ve passed. More than just shambling around in a decaying imitation of his former life, this one zombie gets an emotion somewhere in his wormy brain: rage. And a lust for revenge.
And the other zombies listen to him.
After Dead Reckoning has left, he starts a slow shuffling march toward distant Fiddler’s Green, with the other denizens of the dead town following him mostly because he’s leading. All through the movie they march slowly toward the human fortress. And it’s in the final act when they reach their goal, with their impressive numbers making them a greater threat to these living survivors than any zombie has been since they started rising.
Special kudos to Eugene Clark as the zombie leader, known in the credits as “Big Daddy”; though he’s given no lines more intelligible than what Chewbacca would say, he manages to portray a perfectly believable slightly-smarter-than-average walking corpse, and almost makes him sympathetic.
In fact, one would tempted to wonder if the zombie leader and zombie followers were meant as some kind of statement about group dynamics in our world. But that temptation only really enters the picture because we know that this is George Romero directing, and we expect our living dead with a heaping helping of social commentary.
As it stands, the commentary is practically nonexistent compared to the previous entries in the series. The idea of the isolationist fortress-community is, of course, a politically colorful one, and it would again be tempting to read into that some sort of statement about isolationist America and the “othering” of both the domestic disadvantaged and the foreign “menace” created only by “our” intervention. Except, once more, we can really see all of that only because we expect there to be some deeper meaning in a Romero zombie film. Had some other director’s name been above the title on this one, we wouldn’t be bringing our expectation of socio-cultural signifiers to bear on what is an entertaining and intelligent but not terribly allegorical zombie movie.
I mean, the one story element that stands out as the lightning rod for interpretive handwaving is the Consumerist Paradise of Fiddler’s Green, the kingdom within the kingdom, ruled over by a white-collar commander drunk on his own power. But seriously: EE-vil Capitalist? That’s not a commentary, that’s a threadbare cliche of an antagonist which makes Romero’s portrayal of knuckle-scraping soldiers in Day of the Dead seem fresh and novel. And because it doesn’t work on some deeper, parable-like level, we have no choice to notice that it seems awfully unlikely on the surface too. (Again: Who’s generating the power, and who’s tailoring the suits?)
Because is this movie had a bigger budget than any of the other Dead films, it’s a much larger movie; in fact, it might be his only movie which truly benefits from a big-screen presentation. It’s also a movie which relies more on action-movie pacing, with chases and fights and an honest-to-goodness “ticking clock” deadline driving the plot. In those ways, as I mentioned at the beginning, it seems a companion piece to the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead — a broader, if shallower, piece of entertainment.
With a larger shooting schedule, Romero also manages to work in more little details of the world that has come about, where bread and circuses from the top floors of Fiddler’s Green help keep the street-level peons in place. Some are simply inspired, such as the image of children entertained by a Punch and Judy puppet show being performed inside the shell of a burned-out television set. Others, while cool, raise more questions than they meant to. For instance, Slack has been tossed into a chainlink enclosure with two zombies with spraypainted mouths, with others betting on which zombie will bite her first. Although this is mentioned in passing to be the first time a live human has been used as the prize instead of some other animal, asbsolutely no one watching has the slightest qualms about sacrificing a fellow warm body for entertainment until Riley and Charley wander onto the scene and immediately put bullets in the two zombies’ brainpans. The Old Romero would have supported this by showing how the survivors were becoming less compassionate and less civilized; this New Romero simply moves along with the plot because time’s a-wasting.
So if you go into this recognizing that this is not Your Father’s George Romero, and if you’re willing to recognize the social commentary as being facile (“suits means Republicans, and Republicans means evil!”), you’ll find much to enjoy.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 31, plus, you know, the rest
- breasts: 2
- explosions: 10, plus 13 fireworks
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
- Robert Joy (Charlie) played “Inspector Yerid” in the Voyager episode “Workforce”
- Phil Fondacaro (“Chihuahua,” the crime lord) played “Bell Ringer” in the TNG episode “Encounter at Farpoint”
- David Sparrow (“Arena Policeman”) played “Alien/The Doctor” in the Voyager episode “Renaissance Man”
