Land of the Dead (2005)

"I always wanted to see how the other half lives."

All Riley (Simon Baker) wants is to get out of Fiddler's Green.  All Cholo (John Leguizamo) wants is to get into Fiddler's Green.  Fiddler's Green is the luxurious tower from which Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) runs the tattered remains of a fallen city (Toronto standing in for Romero's Pittsburgh stomping ground) with an iron fist.  Outside of that city, beyond the protection of the river and an electrified fence, is a world overrun with walking, human flesh-eating corpses.

It is Riley and Cholo's job to venture out into that world and collect supplies for the Green and those that live on the streets around it.  Riley does it to help the very people he claims to want to escape.  Cholo does it to raise the necessary capital to buy himself a place inside the Green.

On his last night out, Riley notices that the "stenches" (the term used to describe the walking dead) have begun to behave oddly.  "It's like they're thinking, that they're communicating," he tells Cholo, his second in command.  Cholo, certain that this will also be his last night out, brushes Riley's warnings off and things go bad.  Very bad.

The team returns to the Green and both Riley and Cholo find their hopes of escape crushed by the ruthless Kaufman.  Cholo attempts a brutal act of revenge and Riley is sent to stop him.

But the walking dead are thinking and communicating.  Under the leadership of a sentient zombie (Eugene Clark) the "stenches" are massing to attack the Green...

Although highly flawed, and arguably the weakest film in the four film Dead Series, (Diary of the Dead, a reboot "do over" that starts off an entire new series of films, does not count) Land of the Dead is nonetheless a fitting and more or less somber and much more than less hopeful conclusion.  Yes, Romero himself stated that Land of the Dead has become the official ending chapter of his original Dead Series.  Having watched it repeatedly and having read the original Day of the Dead script, I have no problem agreeing with that statement.

First there is the "civilized" behavior of the zombie leader Big Daddy (Eugene Clark), who does not eat and even goes so far as to stop the zombies he is leading from eating the people that they are killing.  Clearly Romero wants to show that the smarter a zombie becomes, the less likely it will be to engage in the type of behavior that has made it famous.

Second is that Land of the Dead is almost entirely composed of unused ideas and events from his original (and "unfilmmable") screenplay for Day of the Dead.  Here Romero finally gets to film the "epic" final battle between man and zombie, to play with the have vs have-not societal structure he had originally wanted to fuel the human conflict, and...well, it sort of ends there.  Land has the ideas, it just doesn't have a strong enough story, or conflict, to really drive home all of his political commentary.  His cast of characters and their intriguing personal and political conflicts barely have time to be introduced before he has them running off for the Grand Finale.  One message board commentator, back when the move was playing in theaters, said it best, "It's a movie with a first and third act, but no second."  Which is why I recommend watching the Unrated/Director's Cut, because an important character building scene that was deleted has been put back in.  The scene not only makes Cholo a more interesting character, but a far more sympathetic one and Kaufman's inevitable betrayal all the more heartless and heinous.  Cutting the scene did the film a tremendous disservice and considerably weakened what was already a far too dramatically weak film.

Not weak is the film's political commentary.  It is my opinion that, as far as the series trademarked commentary goes, Land of the Dead is the strongest and most fearless of the series; and that makes it well worth watching, at least once.  So strong is the commentary that when I read Naomi Klein's article Disaster Capitalism in an October 2007 article of Harper's Magazine, I could not help but think of Romero's film:

"Not so long ago, disasters were periods of social leveling, rare moments when atomized communities put divisions aside and pulled together.  Today they are moments when we are hurled further apart, when we lurch into a radically segregated future where some of us will fall off the map and others ascend to a parallel privatized state, one equipped with well paved highways and skyways, safe bridges, boutique charter schools, fast-lane terminals, and deluxe subways."

That is the world of Land of the Dead and that is why, despite its weak story elements, I give the film a strong recommendation.  Watch it and know that is exactly what is happening right here, right now, today.

Comments

[Rachel]

Wow. Great post. You've got me as curious as to prioritize this on my to see list.