Army Of The Dead is No Masterpiece, But It's Pretty Damn Entertaining

I think it's a pretty weird fact that this is the 2nd movie I'm ever talking about on this blog and it's also a Snyder movie, despite the fact that pretty much everyone who's heard my opinions of his movies and him as a director can attest to the fact that, I don't see him as a legendary director or one I can put beside the likes of Quentin Tarantino.

Zack Snyder's journey in the world of cinema began with his directorial debut; Dawn of the Dead , and since then he as a director has made countless impacts in the movie industry with his movies, which mostly are in the comic book- action category. His movies make an impact not in the sense that they're phenomenal or Legendary but just because they cause the most noise in the fandom world and whether it's good movies like the Justice League and 300 or objectively bad movies like BVS, fans worldwide always make noise about Snyder movies whether it's positive or negative. And that's basically the reason I chose to write about the most recent Snyder movie on Netflix which is already causing a lot of commotion.

After Seventeen years of seeing the good, the bad and the ugly from Snyder, it's a great thing that he decided to return to Zombie genre with this movie.

As the title of this post implies, my thoughts on this movie aren't bad at all as this Post-apolcalyptic zombie-heist movie made for a really enjoyable and worth while watch.

Army of the Dead centers on a team of mercenaries lead by Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), hired to pull off a major heist in the abandoned city of Las Vegas, with the added challenge of having to navigate the city's huge zombie population. A zombie outbreak began sometime before, with the city being sealed and the zombie population contained within. Making the heist even more challenging is a new, more intelligent breed of zombies named Alphas who now rule over the abandoned city.

With that lead cast and premise we can tell that this movie would be at least a fun and engaging watch especially being from a director that has some of the most polarizing movies out there.

As for my review I'm going to be talking about it in 2 dimensions; The Production and The Direction. 

The production aspect would explore the visuals, execution and impact of the scenes while the direction would face the more thematic parts of the movie such as it's story telling, plot progression and flow of events.

With that said, follow me on this journey as we piece through the good and bad aspects of this movie in this spoiler free review.

The Production aspect of this movie practically has all its best qualities. The work put into the scenery was stellar as the unique opening sequence captivated me immediately. The fight scenes were truly amazing and stunning. It's been a while since I've been genuinely shocked by a zombie apocalypse movie especially since most of the time their scenes are pretty predictable and bland. But in this movie, while the actual action scenes may not surprise you based on the progression, what's going to surprise you is how well executed they are. 

The visuals were great, the fights were bloody, gritty, and impactful and from all of his other movies, the one thing I'll give full credit to Snyder for is his proficience in executing top quality 18+ Gore fight sequences. 

Another underlying aspect I'd like to give credit to this movie in is the use of music. Another thing I really love that Snyder tries to do in his movies is try to make you fully feel the impact of highlight scenes. Even though I'd admit he overuses the slow motion a bit in this gesture in other movies, it was done pretty well in this film and the great background tracks playing just added that final touch to draw the attention of the impending viewers to the scene in question.

Other aspects of the production were also pretty great; the sound effects were awesome, the creative designs of the zombies, great stunt coordination and overall good acting complemented other production values of the movie making each of the many action sequences of this movie truly impressive.

Now as for the Direction, it was good but actually contained most of the issues I had with the movie. 

While the production of this movie was very impressive, the story and progression didn't really do much for me. The characters were pretty much text book Zombie Apocalypse movie characters and there were so many truly unnecessary and stupidly done dialogues in the movie. I also did genuinely love some of concepts and drama in this movie. I loved the concept of zombies having a heirarchy, the top ones being smart and having actual emotions, it really raised the stakes of the main team in their mission. I also loved the dramatic aspect of Scott Ward and his Daughter Kate and their emotional dialogues. 

  

Apart from Scott and Kate, I could honestly care less about the other Characters in the movie. They were blandly written and the more they screentime they got, fighting zombies for the mission while getting scrapped off one by one, the more superficial they felt because I honestly couldn't relate to why they were willing to risk it all on that mission. The flow of events were cool, basic and a bit predictable as it wasn't much different from most other movies of its kind.  In the end I enjoyed the many fights and death scenes in this movie, but they didn't really feel motivated, just greatly done in terms of production. I feel 2 hours+ is a sufficient runtime and Snyder could've utilized it into developing the characters and events a lot more, instead of giving us another action packed zombie movie with the story told in an unfulfilling and convoluted way. 

If I were to give this movie a score, it'd be a 7/10 because although it did fall short in some areas, it was still genuinely enjoyable, fun and stunning. The 'Zombie-Apolcalypse' genre is one filled with a lot of fights and death and I think this movie did that pretty well in blending it with the 'Heist' sub-genre. It's a movie I'd recommend looking for anyone looking for an enjoyable action movie for the weekend and although it's not perfect, it's pretty damn entertaining.

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I've been Climax TCG

Until Next Time!.