Army of the Dead -
I made a vow to swear off Zack Snyder movies after being let down with Batman v Superman, but this movie's cool trailer and premise swayed me. I really should have kept that vow. Where to begin? Firstly, it's too much like Aliens. Besides essentially having the same plot, there's a Burke-like company man (Martin), a strong, silent Hispanic woman (Maria), an audience surrogate (Dieter), etc. Individually, the performers do the best with what they must work with, but even if you find diamonds in a cowpat, at the end of the day, it's still a cowpat. Also, I'm not sure if these similarities making the movie too predictable or the direction are to blame, but it's largely a tension-free affair. Watching zombies get blown away or cut to pieces usually fills me with adrenaline, but I disappointingly reacted with passive disinterest. There are other faults from bad science to plot holes to needlessly excessive length I could pick apart, but I won't. I'd rather call out its biggest offense - to me anyway, because Las Vegas is one of my favorite places to visit - is that it wastes the potential of its setting. The heist might as well have occurred at a bank in Wichita, Kansas, in other words. Since I have nothing good to say about it, why didn’t I give it one star? I feel that rating belongs to movies that fail spectacularly. This movie, on the other hand, merely fails mediocrely. If credit goes to anybody, it's to Netflix's marketing team for producing a trailer so good that it made give Zack Snyder a second chance. My advice to you is to watch it, especially since it's free to do so, and dream about what a better director could have done with this material.
I made a vow to swear off Zack Snyder movies after being let down with Batman v Superman, but this movie's cool trailer and premise swayed me. I really should have kept that vow. Where to begin? Firstly, it's too much like Aliens. Besides essentially having the same plot, there's a Burke-like company man (Martin), a strong, silent Hispanic woman (Maria), an audience surrogate (Dieter), etc. Individually, the performers do the best with what they must work with, but even if you find diamonds in a cowpat, at the end of the day, it's still a cowpat. Also, I'm not sure if these similarities making the movie too predictable or the direction are to blame, but it's largely a tension-free affair. Watching zombies get blown away or cut to pieces usually fills me with adrenaline, but I disappointingly reacted with passive disinterest. There are other faults from bad science to plot holes to needlessly excessive length I could pick apart, but I won't. I'd rather call out its biggest offense - to me anyway, because Las Vegas is one of my favorite places to visit - is that it wastes the potential of its setting. The heist might as well have occurred at a bank in Wichita, Kansas, in other words. Since I have nothing good to say about it, why didn’t I give it one star? I feel that rating belongs to movies that fail spectacularly. This movie, on the other hand, merely fails mediocrely. If credit goes to anybody, it's to Netflix's marketing team for producing a trailer so good that it made give Zack Snyder a second chance. My advice to you is to watch it, especially since it's free to do so, and dream about what a better director could have done with this material.
Why two and a half hours? Anyone can literally pick out exactly where he could and should have made his cuts. Geeta and her kids, the stuff with Scott's daughter. Hell, the daughters character altogether. The obnoxious security guard. He could easily have kept it under two hours but Netflix let him have free rein. So much so that this is considered Snyder's directors cut. I've been wanting to yet haven't seen his Justice League cut yet but this didn't exactly make me want to rush right out and watch it.