"Army of the Dead" has its Snyder-y pleasures but could be more fun

Army of the Dead (2021)

A Las Vegas heist and zombies go together like geriatrics and slot machines in “Army of the Dead,” Zack Snyder’s return to zombie carnage. The title alone is not only a salute to the late, great George A. Romero but filmmaker Snyder’s roots: his confident debut was the legitimately great 2004 “Dawn of the Dead” remake, which remains his best film. Again, Snyder does not try to make any sly or incisive social commentary — and that’s A-OK. “Army of the Dead” is an unpretentious zombie heist movie, but while it sounds like an awesome, rip-roaring blast, why is it a little less fun than it could have been and surprisingly rote?

In the opening, a just-married couple consummates their nuptials with a little road head on a dark desert road, leading to an accident with a military convoy carrying bioweapons from Area 51. Yes, road head caused a zombie apocalypse. An extended credit sequence, naturally in slow motion, helps in padding the film and brings a welcome tongue-in-cheekiness. A Liberace impersonator kicks off a version of a joyful “Viva Las Vegas” at the piano, as undead (and still-topless) showgirls, blood-dripping Chippendale dancers devour humans and Vegas becomes the post-apocalyptic mecca for the zombies, walled off from the rest of the world. Slowly but surely, this tableau becomes bleak, showing the state of the world.

Before the military deploys a nuclear strike on what’s left of Sin City, casino owner Bly Tanaka approaches short-order cook/ex-mercenary Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) to recover $200 million in cash from an underground vault. Since no one has much to live for, Scott agrees and recruits a ragtag team for a “simple in-and-out.” There’s former teammates, mechanic Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera) and the philosophical killing machine Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick); German safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer); influencer Mikey Guzman (Raúl Castillo) and his ride-or-die Chambers (Samantha Win); the casino’s head of security, Martin (Garret Dillahunt); and though it takes some convincing, Scott’s estranged daughter Kate (Ella Purnell), who works at a quarantine camp. Leading the pack is a badass who goes by The Coyote (Nora Arnezeder), and they only have 32 hours.

In this 148-minute body of a movie, Zack Snyder takes a long time to get the show on the road. Not self-aware enough as a filmmaker to make social satire out of zombies, Snyder is purely out for fun, and “fun” is achieved in fits and starts. Written by Snyder & Shay Hatten and Joby Harold, the film does introduce a hierarchy of zombies—the “alphas” (they’re super-fast) and the “shamblers” (the ones from Romero times)—led by a king and queen. (These entrails-eating undead species make one somewhat recall a daytime “John Carpenter’s Ghost of Mars,” and even the zombie king, Zeus, is played by Richard Cetrone who played the head Martian in that under-liked Carpenter joint.) There are a few standout set-pieces amidst the repetitive action, like a tense, creepy slip past a horde of hibernating shamblers and a barrage of gunfire and raining cash inside a casino. A bad guy gets his satisfying just desserts at the paws of an undead (CGI) tiger named Valentine. This might also be the first time The Cranberries’ “Zombie” is applied to a zombie movie. How much fun audiences will have is proportionate to the stylized, excessive Zack Snyder form of it all. Choosing to shoot every frame with a “dream lens” means seemingly watching every frame through fuzzy gauze; it’s an aesthetic that works best for the zombies and less so for human-to-human conversations.

The ensemble of colorful characters certainly makes the best of the material they’re given. It brings a sense of weight that no one is safe here—every gender and race is equal opportunity—but that weight never really materializes because the film doesn’t exactly reward for caring about any of them. Dave Bautista, continuing to show hints of his range, gets to be less deadpan-funny and more anguished. Digitally inserted into the film to replace disgraced comedian Chris D’Elia, comedian Tig Notaro is a much more inspired choice as the cigarillo-chomping pilot Peters. Even if she doesn’t physically share a single scene with any of her co-stars—and the seams show initially with that blurry aura and the introductory shot-reverse-shot scenes—Notaro is a sardonic scene-stealer with ace deadpan timing.

In the middle of this zombie kill-a-thon is a father-daughter reconciliation story in the clunkiest, soapiest, most ham-fisted emotional beats and manipulative dramatic cues. Then again, it is hard to complain too much when the artist is most likely processing his own grief through the material. Whereas “Dawn of the Dead” knew how to be lean and mean, Snyder’s return to this sub-genre often shambles around with a lot of fat. Much like a trip to Vegas, most of what happens in “Army of the Dead” stays in “Army of the Dead.”  

Grade: C +

Netflix released “Army of the Dead” (148 min.) to stream on May 14, 2021.