By D.K. Holm
June 21, 2005
[nota bene: The following column, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending of the movies mentioned, don't read on.]
Yawn of the Dead
GEORGE ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD
The worst thing that ever happened to George Romero was DAWN OF THE DEAD. Not the one he made in 1978, but the new one, the remake from 2004. Zack Snyder's reconception revealed just how much Romero's films tend to be really shitty.
Whereas Romero's films are lugubrious, obvious, terribly acted, repetitious, and — when in color — badly photographed, Snyder's film was crisp, elegant, subtle, somber, visually exciting, and frightening.
Now, with the release of GEORGE ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD, you'd think that the director would graduate to the ranks of the cineliterate. That with a budget of $15 million, astronomical from his viewpoint, he would make the definitive zombie film, or redefine the genre. That he would initiate another franchise, one that he would own this time.
Such dreams are dashed like the fragile skull of a zombified baby.
With his new film, Romero continues to be as terrible as always. It's just that the high-tech trappings seduce you into thinking that he is, at root, a good filmmaker. In truth, though, LAND OF THE DEAD bears all the dire markings of his earlier films.
Obviousness The first shot of the film shows a big "Eats" sign outside a diner and cash station where the action begins. OK, I guess that is kind of funny. But still, it is obvious and also rather flat. It's just a sign that says "Eats." Nothing much more is done with it. Worse comes later, when the camera tracks through the mall that serves as the haven for the few remaining humans and shows a big cage with little birds hopping around in it. Ah, I get it. The remaining humans are like birds in a cage! Subtle. Very, very subtle. Later, though, we learn that these little birds are wooden mechanical birds. So that means … what again?
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Meanwhile, the security force created by Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), the rich industrialist who rules over this last vestige of humanity, are costumed like Nazis. Which ties in which Romero's blatant politics. Like an anti-globalism protester at a WTO conference, he shouts in your face. The world outside Kaufman's enclave is like Iraq; Kaufman asserts that he doesn't " negotiate with terrorists." Soldiers are sent on suicide missions. Meanwhile, inside the secure building, the rich dine and shop and frolic as if nothing were wrong. This is all well and good as politics, but the point is presented with the subtlety of a Mao poster.
Romero is famous for his subtexts, which aren't all that "sub." DAWN OF THE DEAD was an attack on consumerism, DAY OF THE DEAD on militarism. This would be fine if the editorials were embedded in something truly scary. But that just isn't the case, and that's because of:
Inept story structure The narrative of LAND OF THE DEAD is poorly handled. For example one of the major plot points is that Cholo (John Leguizamo) has kidnapped Dead Reckoning, a John Carpenter-esque train-like super truck used to forage food from outside the city limits, in what is called Union Town (where the zombies have been wandering for three years). Cholo wants money owed him by Kaufman and if he doesn't get it he is going to blow up the high tower where Kaufman and the rest of humanity live. Kaufman hires Riley (Simon Baker, of L. A. CONFIDENTIAL), the head of the foraging team, to retrieve it.
OK, so after some listless plot machinations, they get back Dead Reckoning. But then, so what? The plot has shifted out from under the feet of these characters, and the use of Dead Reckoning no longer matters as far as Riley's secondary task of bringing safety of the city is concerned.
Overall, the plot follows the principles of good screenwriting as set forth by Kristin Thompson in her book STORYTELLING IN THE NEW HOLLYWOOD. There is unity of time, the hero has a goal, there is a deadline, and the clock is ticking. But Romero does little with this structure, letting undeveloped characters drift off, and also pissing away with distraction and misdirection what little suspense the set up can provide.
Characters are also mishandled. Asia Argento (who looks increasingly like Courtney Love), as Slack, is introduced in a dynamic manner but then she too is pissed away. When she joins Riley on the mission to fetch Dead Reckoning, she does little, if anything, after that, barely even shooting a zombie. Other intriguing characters are also underused. We don't get to know them, and can't grasp their relevance to the proceedings.
Derivativeness LAND OF THE DEAD is also highly derivative. Dead Reckoning is a blend of vehicles from ROAD WARRIOR and John Carpenter movies. The cage fight used to introduce Argento is inspired by a cage fight in Carpenter, though not as good as Carpenter, who in his way has never not made a zombie film. The team set up to fetch Dead Reckoning is like something out of DIRTY DOZEN and its many successors. Kaufman's empire has a LOGAN'S RUN feel.
There is a clever "window" sequence that is an amusing homage to Dario Argento's THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, where Slack watches helplessly through glass as Riley, outside Dead Reckoning, tries to ward off zombies. It's a good in-joke. But Romero flubs another potential in-joke. When Big Daddy (Eugene Clark), the gas station attendant turned zombie leader shows the zombie known as Butcher how to use his ax for something other than head-lobbing, it could have been a scene as revelatory as the bone-as-weapon moment in 2001, but isn't (in fact, if he'd used a real bone it might have been funny).
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Lack of chills All of the above problems would have been forgiven if the film had flat out been scary. But it isn't. The first thing you want, the number one priority of a zombie film, is that it be frightening, undermining your security about the world you're in. LAND OF THE DEAD is not. It's dull and talky. There is no menace in the zombies, which march on the city like zulus. Synder's film creates real menace with its zombies, and you know what? So does SHAUN OF THE DEAD.
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I think that Romero can't see fit to make his film scary because his heart is actually with the zombies rather than the living. The most sympathetic character in the film is Big Daddy, whose heart bleeds for his followers and who brings determination, new knowledge, and a form of (unexplained, free form) revenge on the living, apparently for simply being alive. I guess at this late date the perpetually adolescent Romero confuses being gross with being scary. And how do you make a world of slow marching zombies advancing on helpless human beings unscary? Romero found a way.
LAND OF THE DEAD will probably be given a pass by most reviewers. And it will be due to rank sentimentality. Either the critic will have fond memories of seeing Romero's earlier films way back when. Or he will be silently acknowledging appreciation for Romero's inadvertent contribution to the rising esteem of horror films and drive-in fare. Scholars like Robin Wood have been helping us to appreciate the films of Romero, Cronenberg, Larry Cohen, and others, and they have taught us to see behind or beyond the qualities of the traditional "well made" film. They have shown us that Romero's films have a certain gravity and intellectual ambition. But Romero, it seems, doesn't make films for the critics. He makes them for the fans.
Usually you know within a few seconds if you are going to like a film (whether or not you are aware of this process). You can sense the director's authority or confidence or command of the medium, or the actor's being in the spirit of the thing. There is ease, yet control, on display at the same time. It's only rare that determining whether or not I like a movie more than that to decide — "deciding" if I like a movie not really describing the situation. One rare example is DIE HARD 2. I wasn't disliking it for the first 20 minutes but it wasn't until the bravura sky walk scene that I fell in love with the film from then and for the rest of its running time.
The DVD release this week of Bruce Willis's action film HOSTAGE (Miramax, 2005, $29.95, Tuesday, June 21, 2005) gives the concerned Willis fan a chance to ponder what went wrong with this late stage example of the short lived siege genre.
Because, after all, one tends to like Willis. In many ways a living cartoon character, he challenges the conventional idea of a leading man (although now that I think about it nearly all great stars challenge the idea of a leading man). When he finally became a movie star with DIE HARD, after three or four unsuccessful attempts (as if we owed it to him to make him a star), it was for his blend of wit and strength that he brought to the role (perfected on MOONLIGHTING), with a dollop of vulnerability.
HOSTAGE, based on a novel by Robert Crais, begins with a prelude in which an arrogant hostage negotiator Jeff Talley, more or less allows, or lets himself think he allowed, a suicidal man to not be taken alive. Jump ahead a year and Talley is a sheriff in a small Northern California town, trying to hold his dysfunctional family together.
This also happens to be the day when, A), three reckless youths on a spree decide to home invade a rich guy's house, and B) the rich guy is suppose to deliver a McGuffin (a disc with some financial info on it) to his criminal masters. The three kids' spree ends up with them taking the rich man and his two kids hostage in his elaborate house.
The extra wrinkle written into the text is that Talley also must serve two masters. On the one hand he needs to get the family out safely and arrest the kids who took out one of his cops. On the other, the rich guy's bosses have found Talley and taken his family hostage, with the understanding that Talley will get into the house and retrieve the McGuffin.
It's a complex premise but not impossible to follow. And director Florent Siri (THE NEST) approaches the material with a stylish visual flair based upon both the action films of the 1980s and the remnants of film noir. But things start to go wrong in HOSTAGE surprisingly early in the movie.
I think that the decline begins at about the 20 minute mark. It's the scene in which one of Talley's cops ends up being the first victim of the spree. I'm not one of those advocates of "caring about the characters," the main critical tool of the TV reviewers, but this is a surprisingly listless death, presented in a faux De Palmian manner with a slug-like trail of blood stretching behind the victim as she tries to crawl to safety.
From there on in, the film feels colder. Willis is in vulnerable mode, but he doesn't have the wit this time. Looking back at his films it seems clear that when he lacks the wit, the crowds stay away. There's a reason for that. They want Stallone to be the sufferer, but they want Willis to suffer with a dollop of ordinary guy humor.
The rest of the cast seems clouded over by Siri's flamboyant visual technique. We don't get to know the three spree killers, although Ben Rogers seems appropriate for the film: he looks just like all those skinny French actors with an underbite and greasy long hair such as Jean-Hugues Anglade (KILLING ZOE). Pollack spends most of his time supine, and Willis's family, about whom he is supposed to care so much, is hardly there. The narrative ends up with two confrontations, one with fire, that goes on and on and on (the film plays with the visual oppositions of fire and water).
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HOSTAGE comes in an excellent widescreen transfer (2.35:1, enhanced) with DD 5.1, which kicks in near the end when the explosions begin. Extras are modest. First off there is an audio commentary track by director Siri. This one is from the "acceptance speech" school of audio tracks, wherein Siri makes sure to acknowledge everyone who had anything to do with the movie and his career. He does, however, in his thick French accent (but good English), address issues that few directors acknowledge on yak tracks, which is character motivation. His chat is followed by a cookie cutter promotional "making of" (12:39) that has everyone on their best behavior (though Willis, in Republican tough love dad mode, assets that his daughter "earned" her role as his movie daughter on her own, without any help from him). Next are four deleted scenes (4:48, with a play all option and optional director commentary), and two extended scenes (with no play all option but also direction commentary). The deleteds show, among other things, the brother spree killers in their own home, and a scene between Talley and the cop who gets killed a few short scenes later. The extended scenes include reference to the fact that Tally's daughter hides his gun because she fears he will use it to kill himself. The animated, musical menu offers 18-chapter scene selection.
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Werewolves make for a tough genre. Like "women in prison" films, they essentially always tell the same story. During the first 20 minutes of a typical werewolf movie, a person is introduced who has some kind of problem. Then, alone on a road one night, he is attacked and bitten by a wolf. The next 20 minutes are taken up with him perplexed as strange urges and new powers over take him. The last 20 or 40 minutes show this new wolf man coming to his full realization and his fate.
There isn't all that much you can do with this basic premise. THE HOWLING added some updating to the basic lore and some modern special effects. AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON added cynical wit and additionally sophisticated special effects. WOLF suggested that becoming a werewolf made you better at your job.
CURSED: UNRATED VERSION (Dimension, 2005, $29.95, Tuesday, June 21, 2005) is an amalgam by writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven of these recent updatings of the classic Universal premise. It's basically WOLF meets Buffy, with teen speak and a sly yearning for the wolf's power ladled over the original brew.
At root, werewolf lore is really a variation on Jekyll and Hyde, with the wolf representing man's primeval, bestial, precivilized roots. When the wolf qualities erupt, they are embarrassing for a while (waking up naked in a zoo, as in LONDON, or in your front yard, as in CURSED's low budget equivalent), but soon the bestial side becomes dominant. The films tend to examine the price paid by the man who, willingly whether he knows it or not, becomes a werewolf.
In the case of CURSED, it is Ellie (Christina Ricci), a young woman who works for the Craig Kilborn show, and Jimmy (Jesse Eisenberg), the brother she is raising now that their parents are dead. One night while driving home they run off the road, where both witness a mysterious bestial creature snatch a woman out of the other car and eat most of her. They also find themselves scratched, a swift ticket to wolfish behavior.
Over the next 20 minutes it dawns on them that they are becoming werewolves. A psychic (Portia de Rossi in a two scene cameo) warns Ellie of this fate, and at work she can sniff out enemies and blood. Meanwhile, at high school, Jimmy is now able to best his bullying jock foes at wrestling and win the admiration of a cheerleader.
This being a Kevin Williamson script, the teen patter are very media savvy, and also the main bully Bo (Milo Ventimiglia), who is already dating the cheerleader, is really gay, masking his secret desires under a rude homophobia (the film ends optimistically, with Bo gathered into the fold of Jimmy, united with his cheerleading ideal, as a fifth wheel).
Meanwhile, Ellie has been seeing Jake (Joshua Jackson), who is opening some kind of nightclub cum house of wax. On the other hand, she is also dealing with a pushy, shrill publicists (Judy Greer, of THE SPECIALS fame). In this film's version of the werewolf lore, Ellie and Jimmy must kill the person who scratched them and cut off his head for the curse to be broken. What this means is that the film will end with two lengthy sequences of good-slowly-turning-evil versus evil-relishing-its-new-self.
This being a Williamson production, there is a surprise as to the identity of the wolf. In fact, the real surprise is that CURSED ends up an unofficial remake of SCREAM 3, with the names changed to protect the redundant. This recycling of material may have been Williamson's solution to the woes visited upon the film, which was drastically revised before release.
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There is no commentary track on the disc, but there is a making of ("Behind the Fangs: The Making of CURSED" (7:31) that could have served as one except for the fact that Craven and Williamson didn't participate. Also on hand are "The CURSED Effects (6:45), "Creature Editing 101" (5:31), with editor Patrick Lussier discusses the principles behind withholding and disclosing the werewolf and also the problems the filmmakers faced in trying to make a PG-13 version of the script. This is followed by "Becoming a Werewolf" (7:56), a video diary showing Eisenberg becoming a wolf, and finally selected commentary over four scenes with FX guy Greg Nicotero and actor Derek Mears (25:16)
And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.
And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK, which is available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, June 22, at 9 AM.
COMING SOON:WAR OF THE WORLDS, more Asian action films, several STAR TREKS, and more!
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