Review: Army Of The Dead (2021)
Written by: Brian J. Sumner
The Official Netflix Trailer
Let me start off by saying that no matter what transpires in the following movie review, I am a huge fan of Dave Bautista and I think his career trajectory within the acting world of Hollywood is only going to keep rising. His stock at this moment is pretty high and I really don’t see it dropping anytime soon. Needless to say, I’m impressed with how well he has taken to acting and being worthy enough of “Leading Man” status.
With that being said, Army of the Dead did not live up to my own personal expectations, and honestly, it didn’t have anything to do with the acting or the story concept. It had everything to do with direction and structure of the script.
The story of Army of the Dead kicks off with the accidental release of a super aggressive, highly evolved version of a zombie after a military convoy is involved in a head on collision with a newlywed couple on the outskirts of Las Vegas. What follows is a very tense and heavily one-sided massacre of the entire convoy by this zombie, which we can only assume is some kind of governmental experiment gone wrong considering it being transported by the army under arguably “hushed” orders and agendas. After the attack, and after “turning” a couple of the military personnel, the pack is drawn to the bright lights of nearby Vegas, at which point, an outbreak ensues with a subsequent quarantine and complete closing off of the city. A montage shows the evolution of the outbreak and also gives us glimpses of some of our main characters as they serve for the United States armed services working to keep the outbreak in check. As far as an opening to a film, Zack Snyder did a pretty good job of setting the stage for the story and subtly introducing a majority of the main characters within the big intro of the film.
That aspect I really enjoyed.
Army Of The Dead ©2021 Netflix, Inc.
From there, our story picks up with Scott Ward, played by Dave Bautista, who has since left the military and is now working as a grill cook at a greasy, hole-in-the-wall diner in the middle of the desert. Clearly playing on the prototypical military trope of “I’ve served my country and now I have nothing to show for it.” Enter Bly Tanaka, a wealthy businessman who may or may not have achieved success via nefarious means over the course of his career, who has the opportunity of a lifetime for our leading man. I should also mention that Bly Tanaka is played by Hiroyuki Sanada (Mortal Kombat, The Wolverine, The Last Samurai) who, in my opinion, is an outstanding actor that hasn’t been utilized enough in Hollywood. His offer to Scott...
Breach the quarantined area of Las Vegas, shoot your way through the undead, break into a casino that has 400 million untraceable dollars locked in a vault, escape with the money, and do all of that before a nuclear bomb detonates and blows the entire city to hell.
Did I forget to mention the part about the nuclear bomb? My bad. Of course, if our hero is able to accomplish this task, he will take home a boatload of cash for not only himself, but also whatever crew he assembles to aid him, so that they may all cash in and, of course, Scott can start a new life for himself. Sounds simple enough, right? For me, up to this point, I’m sold and ready for the ride.
I think it goes without saying that SPOILERS ARE AHEAD so right off the jump I will say that one of the worst possible things you can do with a script is to write it in a way that has a sequel in mind. Which was clearly done with this film. That’s not to say if you have a story concept in mind that you want to see carry over into a sequel that you shouldn’t want that or work towards that, but what I’m saying is, when you structure a story within a script, your story needs to have legs to stand on its own. There are ways to plant seeds for the next film, but don’t set your entire story up to be an extravagant movie trailer for your sequel. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Zack Snyder did with the structure of this film.
The action was on point and exactly what it needs to be for a “zombie movie,” but what intrigued me was the side storytelling of Scott Ward (Bautista) and the emotional toll this outbreak has taken on him. We get introduced to his estranged step-daughter, living in a makeshift colony just outside the quarantined area of Vegas and the tension between the two that has been building since the outbreak began is palpable and makes for great on screen drama. Adding this dramatic element to the already unbelievable and heightened zombie storyline gave Dave Bautista the chance to “stretch his legs” with regard to his dramatic acting and see if he would be able to blend that aspect with the action aspects of the story.
It worked.
It was believable.
You felt the horror of his characters personal trauma.
However, with all of that being said, the fact that the overall story structure was so deficient, it brought down all of those elements of drama, rendering them as points that seemingly didn’t matter in the grand scope of what Zack Snyder ultimately wanted to accomplish; start a franchise. Rather than just giving us a really good, soundly structured, overall story with the backdrop of a zombie outbreak, Snyder decided to amplify all the excessive qualities of the film to go for the “cool factor.” It was as if Zack sat down with his crew and was like, “HEY MAN! WOULDNT THIS BE COOL IF WE DID THIS?!”
Behind the scenes of Army of The Dead ©2021 Netflix, Inc.
No, Zack. It would not be cool if you did that.
I can’t be completely down on Zack Snyder’s efforts with this film. He had the unenviable (and overly financial task) of completely removing one of his supporting actors from the whole entire project and replacing them with an entirely different actor after sexual misconduct allegations came out pertaining to Chris D’Elia and his solicitation of nude pictures from a minor. D’Elia’s character would be completely scrapped from the film digitally and replaced by comedian Tig Notaro via the use of computer animation and green screen filming. The task of swapping these actors out was very costly and very tedious, but kudos to Zack Snyder for stepping up and saying, “I will not tolerate this type of behavior and I refuse to have my work associated with someone like that.”
Sincerely, my hats off to Zack Snyder for making that call, in spite of what the cost ended up being to do so. We are in a much more aware time in our society and seeing that shift of big time players in Hollywood not only being held accountable for their actions but also putting their money where there mouths are to enact change is refreshing and I applaud his efforts in this instance.
© 2021 Netflix, Inc.
Unfortunately, I felt the casting of Tig Notaro didn’t really work for this story. Her character, Marianne Peters, is a “hot shot” helicopter pilot saddled with the task of locating a med-evac chopper on the roof of the hotel-casino to ensure the crew is able to escape quickly from the quarantined area after the heist but before the nuke is detonated. Marianne is meant to be this wise cracking, borderline suicidal, character that adds comic relief to the intensity of the story. While some of the characters lines are funny, the delivery from Tig Notaro makes the impact of said lines fall flat due to Tig’s notoriously deadpan delivery of comedy. That’s not to say that Tig isn’t funny, because she most certainly is. Truth be told, it was merely a styles clash between the character and the actor.
For me, someone like an Ali Wong or maybe Nikki Glaser would have filled out the role much better and had a little more “umph” behind their line delivery. However, the mere fact that Snyder was able to near flawlessly added Notaro to the film and it still work for the character interaction and the story deserves some crazy props for his efforts.
I guess, for me, the main problem I have with this film is the fact that it seemed like it was more important to push towards setting up for a sequel rather than just making it a solid film. It cheapened the dramatic storyline elements with regard to Scott Ward because that part of the storyline instantly became an afterthought when the last ten minutes of the film played out. And that sucks so much for Dave Bautista because he really acted his ass off in this film. It wasn’t enough for me to totally trash the film, but it certainly made it really hard for me to hold the overall product up to a high regard. Zack Snyder should have done better to service his cast’s efforts by refining the script and cleaning up the storyline rather than cramming as much “cool stuff” into it as he could.
The film is actually a decent movie with great action, great music, and the characters are believable. You do get invested in the story, but the glaring problematic issues with the story structure will bring it down for you if you are someone who wants a solid, consistent story. If you’re the type of person who can overlook issues within the script structure and just enjoy the film for what it is, I can say without hesitation that you will not be disappointed by this film. I just hope the sequel does better with script structure and hopefully cleans up the overall storyline.
You can check out our Dude Table Discussion of Army of the Dead here!
Brian J. Sumner is the Host of Dude, What?!, author of The Secrets of Dr. Killiecrankie and would probably be eaten by a zombie within minutes of an outbreak.
