Dave Bautista leads a team of mercenaries into the depths of a Las Vegas casino, during a zombie apocalypse for the heist of a lifetime.
So, not long after Zack’s new extended cut of the rubbish Justice League, he is back with a 2-and-a-half-hour zombie heist film with Dave Bautista leading him through it. What is it with Zack and making extremely long films? He also shot it as well by the way, leading me to think that Zack must be terribly indecisive and loved everything he captured, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw an extended cut of this even – god, I hope not. His wife Deborah helped produced it (keeping it close to home) meaning this is a family made film, lovely and light-hearted… not. Bautista stars as a giant soldier/burger flipper called Scott Ward, who is instructed by a shady businessman to gather a team of mercenaries to enter a zombie stronghold in Las Vegas and find the $200 million that is hidden in a secure vault beneath a casino.
Army of the Dead went through development hell for several years until Netflix bought the rights for it, and with an $80 million budget, I see this as being nothing but a box office bomb. Even though it’s a decent zombie film, I mean, Snyder (the director of Dawn of the Dead) knows a thing or two about what makes the genre tick, but he also knows how to overcomplicate and draw a film out, which is what this suffers from. Saying that, the action scenes and special effects are impressive – as you would expect – and the characters have good humour and rapport, especially when they are using zombies as guinea pigs in a similar method to that in Zombieland, which bridges the gap between humour and over the top action perfectly. It looks like Snyder found the happy medium between all out, zombie massacre and good-natured humour, that many similar films beforehand have succeeded brilliantly at.
The film begins by showing us the events of the zombie pandemic; as a group of soldiers are seen escorting a very mysterious truck across the desert in Vegas, which soon goes wrong and everyone is slaughtered by an “Alpha” zombie, who is the quickest, strongest, most overpowered zombie in movie history. Where does he get all his energy from, he’s dead? Fast forward a few years and Scott Ward (Bautista) is approached by a casino owner named Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), to gather an expert team of soldiers, to help him retrieve a mere $200 million that he left in his casino vault (as you do), before Vegas itself is destroyed by a nuke. Ward accepts, due to a very generous money offer, and recruits a team consisting of a mixture of soldiers, pilots, safe-crackers, smugglers, and social media influencers – just in case no one believed them
As the team make their way through the Vegas zombie stronghold, facing tough and extremely bloody challenges on the way, whilst learning more about these feared monsters – who are more akin to fabled monsters than zombies, much more alike to The Witch King or an Uruk-hai than their slapstick Shaun of the Dead cousins. As you can expect from most heist films, it is not all plain sailing, with some dramatic twists and turns towards the final act that will leave you gasping, there is even a much-celebrated appearance from Siegfried and Roy’s tiger – it is Vegas after all – who is of course, zombified. As the journey continues, offering us some heartfelt moments, leading Bautista showcasing his emotional range, which leaves a lot to be desired (he was more emotional as a wrestler). It all leads to a dramatic and fateful showdown between humans and zombies, will they make it out before the nuke destroys Sin City?
This is certainly a film for you if you love watching a huge mass of zombies getting slaughtered, something that it really does excel at. So, with that, it does succeed at being a very extravagant zombie thriller; silly violence, stylish, and huge amounts of gore, everything you would expect. Why did it have to be so long though, it made me lose interest in the final third, wanting it to just be over, that shouldn’t be the case. Maybe the making of documentary (also on Netflix) will explain more, but I won’t be watching it to find out. The universe obviously has a bright future though, there is already a prequel planned to come out – directed by Matthias Schweighöfer, the German guy in this film – later this year, so there is that to look forward to at least.
Available to watch on Netflix now.
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