Thursday, May 27, 2021 • ThE BuLLETIN
GO! MAGAZINE • PAGE 17
MOVIES & SHOWTIMES
bendbulletin.com/gowatch
‘Army’ fun but riddled with problems
BY MAKENZIE WHITTLE • The Bulletin
N
o one will be shouting about a Zack Snyder’s vision being ruined by a subpar, studio hatchet job. With his latest film, the Netflix Original “Army of the
Dead,” Snyder returns to his roots and delivers a gory, action-filled but over-long zombie movie that mixes “Ocean’s 11” and “Dawn of the Dead” with
hefty doses of canon building that Snyder focuses way too much on.
The premise is pretty simple and takes all
of 10 minutes to present to the audience. A
government experiment is being transferred
from Area-51 to another location in the Ne-
vada desert.
When the truck carrying the payload
is hit by a car and dumps the experiment
which turns out to be a ravenous zombie
who proceeds to bite and turn the entire
military escort it’s been given.
They then set their sights on the bright
lights of Las Vegas and through a surpris-
ingly funny and informative montage, we
see the entire city turn into the walking dead
with survivors merc-ing every brain-dead
thing that comes their way.
We flash forward, and the government
has walled off the city and plans on drop-
ping a nuke on it, destroying all remaining
zombies within the borders.
Fearing the loss of millions of dollars
locked away in his casino, businessman Bly
Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), hires one of the
surviving mercenaries, Scott Ward (Dave
Bautista), to assemble a crew to retrieve it
with the promise of a large payout on com-
pletion.
Gathering his old teammates Maria and
Vanderhoe (Ana de la Reguera and Om-
ari Hardwick) plus his daughter Kate (Ella
Purnell) and some newcomers including a
sharpshooter and his partner, a safe-cracker,
a helicopter pilot and Tanaka’s assistant
(Raul Castillo, Samantha Win, Matthias
Schweighöfer, Tig Notaro, Garret Dilla-
hunt).
When they get to the site a smuggler
named the Coyote (Nora Arnezeder)
guides them in and introduces them and
the audience to the concept of different
kinds of zombies that reside here includ-
ing a group known as Alphas, an intel-
ligent strain created when bitten by the
original zombie, Zeus (Richard Cetrone),
who grant them safe passage through in
exchange for a sacrifice of one of the quar-
More Information
“Army of the Dead”
148 minutes
Rated R for strong bloody violence, gore and
language throughout, some sexual content
and brief nudity/graphic nudity
Clay Enos/Netflix
Dave Bautista performs in a scene from “Army of the Dead” streaming on Netflix.
antine camp’s pervy guards.
As the crew makes their way to the safe,
classic, slow zombies lay in their path as well
as sabotage among their own ranks.
There is way more plot than you can sur-
mise in one review because that seems to be
Snyder’s MO lately, and a lot of it is unnec-
essarily drawn out thanks to the co-writer/
director’s (Shay Hatten and Joby Harold
share the screenwriting credit) obsession
with plot detail and slow-motion action
shots.
The script itself, while multi-layered is
riddled with bad exposition which leads to
more than one rolled eye and when the di-
alogue is good, chances are, it’s given to an
actor that can’t handle the timing that would
make it really gel.
It wants to be both a funny/quippy flick
and a serious action movie, but it never
quite strikes a good balance between them.
Side note: Every movie that has to fire an
actor for criminal activity or impropriety
should just CGI Tig Notaro into the role.
That being said, it is a fun, irreverent
movie overall.
The cinematography is really beautiful,
and there are nonverbal moments that work
so well (although I’m not sure the subplot of
knowing the ins and outs of the Alpha army
was entirely necessary). It’s zombies and
blood and gore and there’s a freaking zom-
bie tiger!
And you can’t help but chortle when No-
taro shouts “Was that a g----n zombie in a
cape?!” Oh yeah, there’s a zombie in a cape,
too.
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0304,
mwhittle@bendbulletin.com
Sharon Preston
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