The Movie: Army of the Dead
The Director: Zach Snyder
The Cast: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Ana de la Reguera, Theo Rossi Matthias Schweighöfer, Nora Arnezeder, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tig Notaro, Raúl Castillo, Huma Qureshi, Garret Dillahunt
The Story: Following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries take the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.
The Review:
This movie, for better or worse, was exactly what I expected it to be. The story is bloated, doesn't make any sense, has the thinnest plot you can imagine, and is filed with stuff that will make you either cringe, or scratch your head, or both. Time means absolutely nothing in this movie. There's a point where the characters realize they have 20 minutes to do a thing and then about a half hour later, they say there is 9 minutes left so that's just an example of the nonsense you can expect when/if you decide to watch the movie.
To be honest, if Dave Bautista wasn't in the movie, I probably wouldn't have watched it. I've been a big fan of his movies for a while now and it's great to see another Asian American make it big in Hollywood. I also have to say I was multi tasking during the movie which is something I would also recommend you do. This is another Zach Snyder story that takes way too long to do anything and he even manages to add a fair amount of drawn out melodrama to a zombie action movie that absolutely doesn't need it.
The run time is one hundred and forty minutes deep and there was about five different times that I left the room and came back and felt like I didn't miss anything because the same conversation was still happening or the same action sequence was somehow still playing out. I mean even the post credits sequence was about three times as long as it needed to be. Zach has no restraint when it comes to the amount of indulgence he drops into everything he does. The whole thing is kind of a throwback to 70's-80's zombie and action movies although combined with the director's need to make everything so glossy and excessive.
Snyder also decided to create characters that are a throwback to the days when Hollywood was blatantly insensitive about things like race and gender. Oh wait, that's still kind of today, but you know what I mean. After all that, did I enjoy the movie? I kind of did although it would have been way better with about 45 minutes cut off the run time and it would have been nice if any of it made sense but that's what you're going to get with a Snyder movie so whatever.
The Verdict:
Army of the Dead is a Zach Snyder movie from beginning to end. It's way too long, it doesn't make any sense, and yet it still manages to be kind of fun. If you like zombie movies, you'll probably be okay with this one. If you're a Snyder fanboy, you're going to praise his story telling style.
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