Review
LAND OF THE DEAD
Starring Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo and Aria Argento
Written and directed by George A. Romero
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It’s been 20 years since a fresh living-dead film from George A. Romero lumbered our way. But if recent look-alikes such as Resident Evil are any indication, you can have all the fancy digital imaging and high-tech tricks in the world, yet still not have a great zombie movie. What you need is that special edge.
Any hack with a camera can Heinz it up and throw around internal organs. It’s another thing to get messy and mess with the mind.
Bottom line, nobody is as sharp at this gunk as Romero, and the master of the undead proves it with Land of the Dead. While the writer-director doesn’t make as big a social comment as he once did (his poke at gross consumerism in 1978’s Dawn of the Dead remained remarkably relevant in last year’s remake), Land of the Dead paints a vision so grim, almost every other contemporary horror is embarrassingly lightweight in comparison. This film is both smart and nasty enough to leave Romero fans giddy, while nightmares will undoubtedly be plaguing the dreams of the uninitiated.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the dead continue to feed off the living, the story revolves around a zombie-free city – a metropolis protected by water on three sides, an electrified fence on the fourth, and a gang of heavily armed mercenaries. Dennis Hopper hams it up beautifully as gazillionaire tyrant Kaufman, ruling his seemingly safe city from the top of a highrise called Fiddler’s Green. Kaufman routinely sends out his henchmen – a gang which includes Riley (Simon Baker) and Cholo (John Leguizamo) – in a huge armoured vehicle to raid nearby towns and bring back supplies.
Although they share assignments, Kaufman’s two main employees are very different in nature – Riley is a do-gooder, while Cholo is a selfish bum, believing if he does enough dirty work, he’ll be granted access to the sweet life inside the boss’s lavish digs. The conflicting motives of these characters alone should spell out how they’ll fare once the mounting throng of zombies (or "stenches" as this gang refers to them) figure out a few tricks and close in.
With the undead a whole lot creepier (their leader, a hulking Eugene Clark, is an especially petrifying presence), and the gore more hardcore than ever, it would be easy to surmise that Romero wanted to say less and simply let it all hang out in this one. But, as Land of the Dead progresses, a subtle message behind the madness does slowly emerge – one that speaks of greed, tolerance and (wait for it) compassion. Good thing we get to manoeuvre through a sea of heads getting munched and extremities being ripped apart to find it. |
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