I just got back from watching George A. Romero’s latest zombie allegory, Land of the Dead, with my brother. I’ve been reading a lot of Roger Ebert’s movie reviews lately. I find them extremely entertaining. They’re well written, insightful, and contain just enough personal anecdotes to keep things interesting. Ebert’s the kind of guy who likes Dawn of the Dead (but really, it’s pretty hard not to), but isn’t particularly fond of either Night or Day. If stars earned directly translate to the worth of a film, and they don’t, and Ebert says they don’t, then Ebert ranks Land as somewhere between Day and Dawn. Personally, I found the film to be leagues better than Day of the Dead, and maybe just a little bit above Night of the Living Dead on the George A. Romero Totem of Quality. Romero’s still yet to top Dawn though, and at this point it looks like he probably never will.

Most of that paragraph was useless and/or irrelevant, but no less true. I didn’t even include any links.

Land of the Dead takes place many years after the events of the original trilogy. An unnamed city has managed to survive the zombie apocalypse and now consists of two worlds: the uber-exclusive Fiddler’s Green, a utopian society isolated within a lofty skyscraper, and the slums surrounding it. Trouble’s brewing amongst the surviving humans, as conflicts between the rich and the poor escalate and an army of zombies, led by an intelligent, and rather pissed off zombie known only as Big Daddy encroaches on their borders. Guns get shot, stuff blows up, and a variety of people are maimed and killed in a variety of interesting and violent ways. The biggest problem I have with the film though, is that there’s just too much stuff happening, and it happens much too quickly.

Whereas all of the previous films in Romero’s zombie trilogy have focused on small groups of people in small, isolated settings (a house, a shopping mall, an underground military base), Land features numerous characters, both important and Mindless Extra Waiting To Die alike, and takes place in a sprawling, if slightly underpopulated cityscape. The plot kicks into gear almost immediately and takes charge of the entire film, leaving little to no room for any character growth. That’s pretty much par for the course for a Romero flick, but in this case I was left with the feeling that I barely even knew any of the characters by the time the final credits rolled. Sure, I knew what happened, but I couldn’t really tell you about who it happened to. Because that’s exactly what happens in Land of the Dead: the plot happens, and the characters are just along for the ride. An extra 30 minutes or so (the film is only 93 minutes long as it is) to more fully flesh out the relatively large cast would have been nice.

Also, the actor (whose name I’m not going to bother looking up) who plays Big Daddy, the intelligent leader of the zombies, isn’t quite convincing in his performance. He comes across more as a stupid man than a smart zombie and just isn’t as convincing as Day’s Bub in the role of a zombie with smarts. Bub does show up for a brief cameo appearance though, as does the moustache-brushing looter from Dawn of the Dead. Denis Hopper really steals the show though, even though he only shows up in half a dozen scenes. Every single interesting line from the film comes out of Hopper’s mouth and he generally just hams it up and has a lot of fun.

Because it’s a zombie movie, and because it’s a Romero zombie movie, Land of the Dead features lots of gruesome violence. Most of the effects aren’t CG, which I wholly support, and look really, really nice. The movie’s use of CG is minimal and subtle, used only when more traditional means were an impossibility, such as in rendering a zombie whose severed head bounces and attacks from his back, desperately hanging on through its spinal column. I kinda miss the Day-Glo red paint though.

As a fan of anything Romero’s made with “dead” in the title, Land of the Dead is a perfectly enjoyable movie. I’ll definitely pick it up when it’s eventually released on DVD. I think fans of the series will have a hard time being disappointed, especially after 1985’s Day of the Dead. And hell, Roger Ebert likes it/I’m tired of writing.