Land of the Dead
The Planet as we currently know it is no more, instead the undead roam free, feeding on human flesh. The remnants of humanity have barricaded themselves inside cities, leaving the undead outside.
In one such city the few powerful and wealthy people are far detached from the realities of the world and live in their luxury tower block known as Fiddlers Green. The poor however are banished....
Movie:
The Planet as we currently know it is no more, instead the undead roam free, feeding on human flesh. The remnants of humanity have barricaded themselves inside cities, leaving the undead outside.
In one such city the few powerful and wealthy people are far detached from the realities of the world and live in their luxury tower block known as Fiddlers Green. The poor however are banished to the streets to survive the best way they can.
Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) is a tycoon who controls the raiding parties that leaves the relative safety of the city in the hunt for food and supplies that go to the inhabitants of the city but also to keep the rich stocked with luxury goods.
Riley (Simon Baker) heads up one such raiding party and has Cholo (John Leguizamo) as his second in command. Amongst their arsenal of vehicles they use is a massive armoured truck called Dead Reckoning which they use to move into the suburbs of the city on order to suppress the Zombies and get these supplies.
Riley is sick of Kaufman and the city and wants to head north to relative freedom and Cholo wants to move into Fiddlers Green to rub shoulders with the elite. However Riley’s plans are thwarted as are Cholo’s. As a result Cholo steals Dead Reckoning and tries to extort millions from Kaufman, whilst Kaufman himself sends Riley and his friends Charlie (Robert Joy) and Slack (Asia Argento) after cholo to stop him.
In the meantime the Zombies who have started to become more aware and communicate albeit on a basic level head towards the city for a showdown with the humans.
Review:
Way back in 1968 George Romero and a few friends got together and made Night of the Living dead, and the modern Zombie movie was born. Shot in black and white and costing around $100,000 to make The Night of the Living Dead has become a cult classic, making much more money in revenue than it cost to make. However by the time 1985 came round and we were offered Day of the Dead things were different. The film was slated by critics and George did not do much in the way of film since.
The “dead” films had not been touched (Apart from a Remake of Night of the Living dead by Tom Savini) until Land of the Dead was released in 2005. So a full 37 years after the first movie we have another zombie film to sink our teeth into. And a pretty good movie it is too.
The script was generally ok, although there were a couple of issues I had with it that I didn’t understand. Like why a Zombie would be in a stores refrigeration unit and why one actor winks at another and then knocks her out. The strangest thing of all though is that except for some basic communication the Zombies are essentially dumb, slow walking creatures, judging by the first “battle” the humans could have taken back the planet easily. But if you can look through these issues then we have a pretty good, typical Romero Zombie movie.
I have read elsewhere that Romero uses the dead films to satirise modern American culture. And yes indeed you can see that, we have Kaufman, rich and powerful and living in luxury, making all the decisions that affect the average person which live out on the street (literally) a real unfair class system. In fact the people outside the tower have more in common with the Zombies than they do with the Elite in their tower.
Personally I don’t care about the satire or the (not so) subtle undertones that the movie is meant to portray. I want to see a good entertaining film, with lots of Zombie action and gore. And we get it, there are a lot of good Zombie kills and good close up gore. If I had anything bad to say about the film it would be that you never really feel that Riley and his immediate likeable entourage are in any danger which loses a bit of the suspense. But apart from that we get a good solid Zombie/Horror film it even has a few funnies thrown in for good measure.
Picture:
We are given a 2.35:1 anamorphic picture which is crisp and rich with colour; the blacks are infinite and are handled very well. On my 30” LCD I couldn’t make out any haloing, artefacts or grain etc. overall a very good transfer to disk. I have read that there is a bit of artefacting on this movie but I have to assume that this is on a projector/screen setup as I couldn’t detect any.
Sound:
We have a DD5.1 soundtrack which is pretty good. Surrounds are used mainly for the score although we do get a bit of monster action through them too. I did notice sometimes that the dialogue was a bit low through the centre, and if I turned it up to compensate then the bass was in danger of arousing the neighbours, but that seemed to be only on a small section of the movie. The soundtrack was un-intrusive and added a good ambiance to the film.
Extras:
• Undead Again: The Making of Land of the Dead: or in other words how many times can we big up George Romero. Hideous amounts of back slapping from members of the crew. Which is annoying especially when there is little information on the actual making of the movie; sure we see a few scenes from the film but nothing that tells us much about the actual making of the movie. Approx 12 minutes.
• A day with the Living Dead: John Leguizamo takes us on a little tour of the special effects and the set; this is quite amusing actually with some choice language by Leguizamo. Approx 7 minutes.
• Bringing the dead to life: Greg Nicotero the Special Make up effects designer talks us through the making of the Zombies for the movie. Approx 9 Minutes.
• The Remaining Bits: These are some deleted scenes, the best of which was seeing someone get their lips bitten off. Approx 3 Minutes.
• Feature commentary with George Romero, Producer Peter Grunwuld and Editor Michael Doherty: Informative documentary from that chaps where they explain the scenes and give us some trivia on certain occasions. Quite interesting for those that like listening to commentaries.
• When Shaun met George: Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright who were the brains behind Shaun of the dead had a small cameo role in the Land of the Dead; they got the role as George loved the movie. This nice 12 minute feature is quite a nice little addition to the disk.
• Scenes of Carnage: some of the gorier scenes put to some music. Approx 1.5 minutes.
• Zombie Effects, From Green Screen to Finished Scene: this is quite good, we get to see scenes as they were then as they appeared in the film, some of the differences are quite subtle and others drastic. Approx 3 minutes.
• Bringing the Storyboards to life: comparing storyboards to actual scenes in the film. Personally I don’t find these things particularly interesting but some people may.
• Scream Tests, Zombie Casting Call: animated zombies dancing to the thriller video but not with the thriller music, a complete waste of time extra. Approx 1 minute.
• 2 trailers: 1 for King Kong and 1 for Skeleton Key. And these have what to do with George Romero Zombie films?
Overall:
Although there are quite a few extras of the disk most of them are not that good, although I did enjoy a few of them including the commentary saying that the film itself was thoroughly enjoyable with plenty of gore and a good continuation of the “dead” movies. Recommended viewing.
Review Equipment
Harman Kardon AVR7300 Amplifier
Harman Kardon DVD 22 Multi Region DVD Player
KEF PSW2500 Sub-woofer
KEF Q4 front and surround speakers
KEF Q6 centre speaker
Phillips 30" 30PF9975 LCD TV
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