Army of the Dead

Oh, a zombie-tiger … I see where this is going. Extremely brutal, yet a little emotional and a big missing piece of logic, that’s “Army of the Dead” from director Zack Snyder.

After an unsuccessful transport of a dangerous “treasure”, it sets free and invades Las Vegas contributing to the zombification (that word’s not made up) of the entire city. Luckily, the United States is quick to act and build a wall around the city making it a quarantine zone. Hired by Hiroyuki Sanada, our group of heroes is up to break into the vault of his own casino to steal all the cash and get out of there before the United States will send this place to hell.

Our group consists of Dave Bautista as Scott Ward, Tig Notaro as Marianne Peters, Ana de la Eguera as Maria Cruz, Omari Hardwick as Vanderohe, Nora Arnezeder as Lily, Garret Dillahunt as Martin, Raúl Castillo as Mikey Guzman, Theo Rossi as Burt Cummings, Samantha Jo as Chambers, Ella Purnell as Kate Ward and Matthias Schweighöfer as Ludwig Dieter.

With a run time of 148 minutes, the heist film is quite long but still manages to be gripping enough to keep me away from my phone. Although there is an ensemble of characters, all of them get the right amount of screen time to be characterised and none of them wer directly forgotten after s/he appeared on screen.

On the other hand, we have the villains. I haven’t seen many zombie films but still enough to say that these zombies are a little cooler than others because of their unusual behaviour which opens doors for new challenges for our group of professional casino robbers. Apart from that the villains are sadly lame, typical and have questionable motives.

Aside of the whole heist and zombie story, we get to see a wonderful father-daughter relationship develop. Oh, wait that was “The Last of Us”. Indeed, the film contains some father-daughter moments but they are far too rare to tell an emotional story between those characters. To my own surprise, I was touched the most in the first scenes which look like an “Intro-Trailer” and give away the premise of how things are and how some of the characters met.

In conclusion, I can say that “Army of the Dead” is a well-made zombie heist film which is pretty predictable and for sure no roller coaster ride of emotions like the previously mentioned “The Last of Us” but still gripping and enjoyable for the new ideas it brings to the table. And it has a fucking zombie-tiger!?! What more do you want?