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George A. Romero's Land Of The Dead

2005, Movie, R, 93 mins

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George A. Romero's Land Of The Dead: Review

GEORGE A. ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD | LAND OF THE DEAD
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Nearly two decades after George Romero's sadly truncated DAY OF THE DEAD (1986) apparently concluded his apocalyptic zombie series, this grim, gory fable proved there was still life in the dead. Some years after the first corpses rose up to eat the flesh of the living, the "stenches" have inherited the Earth. The living cluster in safe areas like downtown Pittsburgh, protected on two fronts by natural barriers — the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers — and on the third by soldiers, electrified fences and makeshift barricades. The rich live in the luxury residential/retail complex Fiddler's Green, kowtowing to the despotic Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), while the less fortunate occupy the streets below, numbed by the drugs and honky-tonk entertainment Kaufman cannily supplies. Troublemakers, like budding revolutionaries with homegrown ideas about equitable distribution of resources, simply disappear. Professional scavengers Riley (Simon Baker) and Cholo (John Leguizamo) forage outside for goods in a jerry-rigged tank dubbed "Dead Reckoning," but after Cholo has a falling-out with both Riley and Kaufman, for whom he's been doing dirty work on the side, he commandeers the heavily armed vehicle. Riley and a small crew — tough-as-nails hooker Slack (Asia Argento), brain-damaged sharpshooter Charlie (Robert Joy) and three mercenaries — must retrieve it before Cholo reduces Fiddler's Green to zombie-ridden rubble. Meanwhile, Riley has made the unsettling observation that as the living become ever more casually cruel, abusing the undead for amusement, certain zombies are exhibiting an unfamiliar flicker of consciousness. Though written in the late '90s and reworked in light of 9/11, this film's gloomy worldview is lifted directly from Romero's original DAY OF THE DEAD screenplay and, to a lesser degree, the film itself. The dehumanization of the living by endless zombie killing, the heedless arrogance of the haves and festering resentments of the have-nots and the ruling class' cynical use of bread and circuses to short-circuit rebellion are all there. Romero isn't a subtle filmmaker — the sociopolitical underpinnings of his DEAD films have always been brutally clear — but LAND is alive with subtle touches. In particular, casting African-American actor Eugene Clark as the leader of the awakening zombies is deeply suggestive, since black men have always been heroes in Romero's DEAD films. His sympathy for the living has decreased markedly since NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), and perhaps the lesson of LAND's pessimistic last scene is simply that we all belong dead. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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