OUT NOW: Army of the Dead

Years after a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, the city has been abandoned and walled off. A group of mercenaries are hired to break back into the city to rob a vault of 150 million dollars.

I was kind of excited about this movie - a heist movie set in the middle of a zombie-infested Las Vegas sounded awesome.

It is also created by Zack Snyder, but I always try to give filmmakers a chance to surprise me. Sadly this movie did not.

When I put the movie on, I noted that the runtime was 2 hours, 20 minutes - a bad sign. Snyder's movies trend long, and I am not the biggest fan of Snyder OR long movies.

First, the good: the acting is fine - Dave Bautista is fine in the lead role, and the other players are fine if a bit nondescript. The most interesting character to watch is Tig Notaro as the sardonic helicopter pilot  - she was a late addition, CG'd in to replace Chris D'Elia. It is pretty seamless but it might have something to do with one of the things I hated about the movie.

For the first couple of scenes I thought something was off with my screen - everything behind the characters was out of focus. But this is an intentional choice - a choice that I found baffling and frankly annoying. Snyder is a filmmaker who likes to utilise specific aesthetic choices and spread them over the entire movie. Nothing has changed with Army of the Dead.

He tries to come up with emotional arcs and some moral ambiguity, but I did not care. The storylines are cliche'd, and while the acting is fine, it is all along the same line of solemn intensity. Even the attempts at humour ring false.

The big issue is that this movie is too big and polished for what it needed to be - this movie needs to be made for 500, 000 in a warehouse, with a bad English dub.

Some people might find some pleasure in the set pieces, but the movie lacks so much vitality it is the cinematic equivalent of one of its undead 'shamblers'.

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