Army of the Dead

8/10

Zach Snyder's first post-DCU film goes back to his roots. The movie that started his career was the Dawn of the Dead remake and after all these years he's back to zombies. In Army of the dead, the entirety of Las Vegas was quarantined and blocked off after a zombie outbreak. A typically ragtag group led by former soldier Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) is organized to retrieve a whole lot of money from a casino vault before the government blows the place up.  

There's been a lot of zombie movies over the years, and Snyder seems to realize that. He tries to tackle some new things with zombies (he definitely has the budget to), smart zombies and zombie animals. 

Movie looks good. The intro montage showing the start of the zombie attack is really impressive and the best planned part of the movie. Since this takes place out in the heat of Nevada, Snyder actually uses sunlight in his film, though it is still muted somewhat as is the director's wont. The zombie fighting is well done. It's especially fun to see the massive Bautista take down zombies with just a knife.

You get a sizable number of distinctive characters in this. The one who stands out the most is safe-cracker and comic relief Dieter (Matthias Schewighofer).

There are a lot of plot points you can question about this, especially the whole plan for the heist, but they weren't severe enough that they interrupted my just enjoying the film.

One thing that bugged me is that ending goes on a little too long past a good stopping point. It's not as long as Snyder's infamous epilogue to Justice League, but it feels inelegant. 

Overall, Army of the Dead is a pretty entertaining zombie action flick. Nothing more, nothing less. Recommended.