Review: Waterworld (1995)

Directors: Kevin Reynolds, Kevin Costner

Starring: Kevin Costner, Jeannie Tripplehorn, Dennis Hopper

“…like a turd that just keeps floating.”

-Dennis Hopper about this movie (may be taken out of context...)

I have heard so much about this movie, this Waterworld. People panned it globally, but then of course there were also the chosen few who had to step up and claim, “Oh, it really isn’t that bad! People are being too harsh!” Well I can safely say I won’t be listening to any of those people again, because this movie is so bad it makes me want to drown everyone involved in it!

So it starts off with some narration:

“In the future…the polar ice caps melted, flooding the Earth with water. Those who survived…have adapted…to a new world.”

Well, gee, that was a quick run-down. What, no other explanations or back story? Why the hell even bother doing that if you’re just going to give us two sentences before you jump into the story? Imagine if Star Wars did that.  “In a galaxy far far away, stuff happened. There were aliens and they were at war.” Then cut to the first scene. Yeah, doesn’t hold up very well, does it?

Well, then we cut to our first scene, appropriately involving a man urinating into a cup and then pouring it into this weird filter-machine so that he can drink it. Yup, this science fiction epic opens with a guy drinking his own urine; I couldn’t even make that up if I tried. No doubt a fitting metaphor for the movie though. So our main character played by Kevin Costner is out on the open sea, dressed in a tattered uniform that looks like something out of…well, any other post apocalyptic film, really. He finds a bag of dirt and has to protect it from a bunch of other bandits and then he takes it to trade for supplies at a nearby town. It’s revealed that he is strangely enough, part fish…how that happened I don’t know, but at least they’re trying, I guess. Of course, like every other dime-a-dozen post-apocalyptic movie with terrible writing, the humans in the future have reduced seemingly solely to caveman-esque idiots who can’t be rational about anything, and so they sentence him to be “recycled” the next day.

Then we get some talk with a little girl who has a tattoo on her back that can supposedly map a path to “dry land” and an old guy who is watching her. She says maybe Costner can help them find it…woo, this movie is on a roll, isn't it? Goddamn, this is boring. I mean, what the hell, you couldn’t even provide us with one thing that is in any way exciting, interesting or thought provoking about this incredibly novel concept? It takes a lot of anti-talent to do that. And have you noticed that Kevin Costner is just completely ugly looking in this? I’m not asking for him to be a Casanova, just…a little bit cooler looking. He just looks like crap, as it is. It’s a terrible design.

So the old guy puts on a hat with a windmill spinning on it for no reason, and goes to talk to Costner, asking him to tell him about dry land. He doesn’t. The next day they try to kill him, but are very conveniently stopped by a bunch of other bandits attacking the fortress. They’re led by Dennis Hopper, who is bald and dressed in…well, it looks like a tuxedo with cheap carnival coins sewed on and bell bottoms; it’s just fashionably retarded. Yes, the world is now rid of any kind of coherent government, any kind of rational logic, but Dennis Hopper survives; someone kill me now. The fight scene that follows is full of all kinds of wacky stuff, ranging from cannons to machine guns to spears to WATER SPORTS VEHICLES!

Yes, you can tell these guys are the BEST water skiers Dennis Hopper could find. Such articulation, such balance, such TALENT!

Yes, the post apocalyptic world that is full of people with dirty hair, skin and clothes fighting to survive is full of jet-skis; go figure. Hopper and his motley crew destroy the whole city, the woman and her daughter with the map on her back free Kevin Costner and they try to make their escape in the midst of all the chaos around them. When Costner’s boat gets stuck, the little girl has to show him how to operate heavy machinery and open the gates to the city wider, because I guess he really couldn’t figure that out by himself or something…

Dennis Hopper gets blown up and loses an eye, but quickly recovers enough to start a new search for the girl with the map on her back, who is with her pretty young mother and Kevin Costner in a boat that has already gotten safely away. Costner says they have to kill her daughter, since the boat can’t handle too much weight anyway, and they would die either way. But instead, the mother bargains him with sex while the daughter goes below and finds out that Crayola crayons have not gone extinct in this very distant future. Costner turns down the beautiful naked woman in front of him because she was so rude to him before, and now only wants to be with him because he can get her out of the city. That’s right, you alien-fish-man-thing. You go right ahead and teach morals, you bland character, you.

Then we get…

Ahhhh! AHHHHH! Jesus, what the hell, movie? Did you really have to show us that? It’s bad enough Dennis Hopper is in this movie, but then you’ve got to go and do this shit? He doesn’t even wear it for that long, so…why even show it? And then we get to see his whole crew, and I think I just found the biggest problem with this. It’s not just the fact that this movie has no memorable dialogue, no likable characters and nothing original about it, but it’s just got no style. It’s not even a good looking movie. The costumes are bland looking and often even silly, the settings are drab and dull and nothing about it looks impressive at all. It’s like The Fifth Element except from the bargain bin; it’s just insipid.

 After a shockingly dull attack by some idiots in fighter jets and…one man planes from the 20s…Costner finds that the woman has damaged his boat while he wasn’t looking. He pins her down and cuts her hair off, and is then promptly scolded by the little girl for being mean when the mother already apologized. Great, so now we’re trying to teach the fish man morals instead of the other way around. Wonderful. He cuts the little girl’s hair too because she used too many Crayolas to color the boat against his will, and I guess the movie thinks this is important for some reason? And then we get, surprise surprise, another dull, overly long action scene! God, can’t these morons make anything exciting, just a little bit? How can they make action scenes so irrevocably dull? How is it humanly possible to make explosions and gun fights SO BORING like in this movie?

But then we get something even worse: the dreaded ‘sappy bonding moments’ scenes, where, like in every movie like this, the big tough guy finally chisels his heart out of the rock it’s encased in by having a lot of cutesy, touchy-feely moments with the innocent and childlike character. Except here it’s sugarcoated with gag-worthy hippie moralistic crap about finding yourself and being one with the Earth…UGH. This is just so worthlessly, insipidly awful that I’m not even going to spend any more time describing it. It’s like torture! Choose between a poorly done action scene and a melodramatic sequence of mushy, over-sentimental drama; it’s like choosing which one of your parents you want to murder first.

Oh, god, it's like a Hallmark card by a rejected PR guy from the lost city of Atlantis.

And wouldn’t you know it? Another droll, clumsily done action scene, this time with Dennis Hopper and pals on a boat full of dead people used like puppets...pretty elaborate set up when all they did before was shoot at them. And all they do this time is shoot at them too! Then Costner confronts the woman about the marks on the girl’s back, since it’s obvious they were after her this time. Costner says there IS no dry land, and then the woman gives one of the more hammy and over the top performances in this movie…just embarrassing really. It turns out that the remains of the Earth’s dry land have been submerged under the water for centuries, all but forgotten.  But while they’re on their whimsical journey of discovery, leaving the little girl alone, Hopper and his crew come to attack! Gee. Maybe you should have been, I don’t know, WATCHING THE SHIP, you retards. Maybe then Hopper wouldn’t have been able to kidnap the girl and take her for himself, hmmm?

On the ship, as she’s now their prisoner, Hopper comes in to talk to her, wearing some sort of patchwork baseball cap, as I guess the movie is still trying to look ‘out there,’ and then he invites the little girl to come sit on his lap and smoke cigarettes. Real role model right there, that Dennis Hopper. Real upstanding citizen. She refuses to help him, saying that Costner and the woman will come for her.

So, are they?

…I think their priorities could use some work.

After that, Costner finds some National Geographic magazines below deck…wait, what? National Geographic magazines? We’re…hundreds of years into the future and somehow National Geographic magazine has withstood the test of time, aging and…being submerged in water? I guess they must have found some kind of special indestructible, super-recyclable paper or something; I don’t know. It makes about as much sense as anything else.

So they get picked up by the old guy from the beginning of the movie on his weird flying contraption, but Costner leaves again soon after to track down the girl. And, I just have to say…it’s really, really lame to do what they do here, and have the little girl narrating how cool Costner is to one of the guards while Costner takes out all of the other guards. That’s just bad directing.

Long story short…Costner blows up the entire ship with one firecracker down the oil tank hole, yet he isn’t hurt, nor is Hopper or the little girl. He saves the little girl but Hopper keeps coming after them, shooting the flying contraption and knocking her off down into the water. Hopper and his goons are about to get her when Costner jumps and saves her, causing them all to run into one another and explode, like the Looney Tunes if they weren’t ever funny. Then our heroes travel on for a long time, judging by the amount of fade-ins and -outs, until they find dry land. This just ruins the only potentially good moral this movie had going for it, about peoples’ deluded hopes and dreams in dire situations (say, if the dry land really had been the myth Costner had thought it was). But no, they all just live happily ever after. Except for the woman and the little girl, who are sad about Kevin Costner, who leaves them to go back to the water, thus making all their vomit-worthy emotional connections throughout this damn movie completely pointless. Hooray!

This movie is wretched! The direction is cheap, the acting is mediocre, the plot has been done a million times before and it’s just boring, boring, boring and LONG AS HELL, too. I think the worst thing about this movie is just the way it expects you to really care about these characters and this situation. It sets up all of these situations where it seems like they’re trying to draw you into the characters with emotional appeals and awful pseudo-hippe-type philosophy, but then the writing is just so dull and so faceless that it’s flat out impossible to do that, and you really wonder how they ever thought any of this was compelling. It’s seriously infuriating. This movie didn’t make me care one iota about any character in it. And for a movie that focuses so much on its characters in such a desolate environment, to have a flaw this big is just unforgivable. I hate this movie, it could have been written better by any given fifth grader and I never want to see it again as long as I live! Keep your heads above the water, audience, and do not support dreck like this.

Review: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

Director: Tobe Hooper

Starring: Dennis Hopper, Caroline Williams, Bill Moseley, Bill Johnson

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092076/

The legend goes that 13 years after the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they finally decided to make a sequel. And it sucks. It sucks hard. Do you need more?

Our movie starts with a few seconds of text recounting the legend of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie, and thusly reminding us of how good that one was. We then go to an open country road where some dork wearing kooky prism-sunglasses is shooting a gun out the window for no reason. He and his companion call up a sexy radio hostess named Stretch, whose name is clearly ripe for any number of sexual innuendos, and joke around with her while playing chicken with some poor shmuck who was probably just trying to get home and eat lunch or something. Gee, listen to the way that prism-sunglasses kid is laughing…it’s like audible AIDS. He gives off this really shrill, piercing laugh that I actually think is exploding my---

Oh, hey, radio girl is playing The Cramps. That’s much better. Thank you, movie.

Buuuut it’s not long before we switch right back to the two asshole brothers who want to prank-call her again, because they clearly have nothing better to do on their trip to the Texas low country than prank call innocent people and make their lives that much more annoying. Well, movie, I’ve got to give you credit; you’ve already made me want to kill these guys myself! I can’t wait till Leatherface does it later.

And luckily we don’t have to wait that long, as he actually shows up on the road a second later and attacks them after the driver calls him a pig-fucker and tells him to back up – which Leatherface does, right before he gets out his chainsaw and cuts their car to pieces while it’s already moving. For some reason he’s wearing a weird zombie-scarecrow costume or something that covers his face, even though it falls off and you can see it’s him; that’s fucking weird. And the whole thing gets caught on Stretch’s radio tape…

The next morning we get introduced to our main character, played by Dennis Hopper. Yup, Dennis Hopper again; he’s been appearing in almost every god damn movie I’ve watched lately, like he’s fucking haunting me or something. He’s playing a washed up sheriff who has been hunting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre killers ever since the first movie and none of the other cops really take him seriously or believe anything he says. But Stretch comes to talk to him and try to help him, and he refuses…I guess he just doesn’t like publicity that much.

So then we go to a Chili Cook Off where a famous chef is winning for the second year in a row. “It’s the meat,” he says, when asked what his secret is to making it so good, with a twinkle in his eye. Gee, that couldn’t possibly be foreshadowing the fact that he’s probably a bad guy and is using cut-up humans killed by Leatherface to make it, could it? Not that I’ve ever seen this movie. Just a healthy bit of speculation, mmm.

After buying a chainsaw at the World Chainsaw Emporium, Hopper goes to meet with Stretch the radio girl at her house, apparently having changed his mind as he wants her to play the tape of the two morons getting killed on the radio for everyone to hear…he says it’s so that the law will realize that he’s not just a joke, but really, I think it would just get her in huge amounts of trouble and probably even set Hopper back further, but hey, what do I know, I haven’t been chasing the Leatherface family for 14 years. And he introduces himself as Lefty. That’s right; our crime fighting team in this movie is named Stretch and Lefty. Why does that sound more like a bad comic strip you’d find in the Sunday papers or something?

So Stretch plays the horrific murder noises on the air for everyone to hear, and that guy from the Chili competition hears it from someone on the phone while driving a truck that only Kurt Russell from Big Trouble in Little China would drive. Oh, and it doesn’t matter, but he’s actually driving with the chili open and sitting on the Texas-shaped trophy he won sitting next to him in the passenger seat. That’s…really strange. Then that night after Stretch is all alone, she gets ambushed by Bill Moseley, playing one of the Leatherface family. He stumbles around chewing the scenery and acting like a ham until Leatherface pops out of the records room, where he’s apparently been hiding this whole time – gee, how did he even stay put that long? I thought he was like some kind of barbaric savage who couldn’t do those kinds of things to save his life.

I have to admit there are a few good scenes in this whole thing that do invite a few scares and some tension. Like when Leatherface corners Stretch in the room and runs his chainsaw up her leg…but for the most part the silliness of Bill Moseley and the temper tantrums of Leatherface afterward kind of drag it down.

So then Stretch decides to follow them. While she’s driving, apparently the sound guy for the movie was so bored that he decided to put in goofy, over the top music that has nothing to do with the TCM franchise. And why the hell is she following them? What, she couldn’t just alert the law enforcement? I know they didn’t believe anything had really happened, but come on, lady, YOU COULD HAVE SHOWN THEM YOUR WRECKED UP RADIO STATION. That’s veritable proof right there! You don’t have to go after them alone, you frigging idiot!

She gets chased by a car that is driven by Hopper, imagine that, and she ends up standing right in the very spot where there’s a trap-door to cave in the ground on her. Hopper gets out his chainsaw and starts screaming his head off as he goes to attack the Leatherface family madhouse, which is full of things like giant statues of hands holding knives, twisty slides like you’d find on a playground and walls that are full of fresh human entrails – weird family decoration, but I’ll go with it. But man, Hopper is a terrible cop. Does he just go in screaming and shouting every time he wants to apprehend a suspect? Imagine how that would have worked in Silence of the Lambs. He would have been dead in two seconds. He really doesn’t think this is going to, uh, alert anyone of his presence and possibly get him killed? Well, again, I guess I’m not the expert here. He probably knows best.

Hey, kids, let’s play PLOT ROULETTE! This is a game where we spin the great wheel of movie sequel plots and see what we’re going to have to deal with. Today’s plot wheel winner is…the sympathetic serial killer! Yes, Leatherface actually falls in love with Stretch, and tries to hide her from his crazy family by putting the face of her dead best friend over hers and also putting his hat on her head, too, and then tying her up so she doesn’t get away. It turns out he’s still alive, though, even though his face was skinned off…and actually, what follows is a really touching scene that’s also equally hard to watch and brutal, as he stumbles around, having been beaten within an inch of his life and had his face cut off. He manages to untie her and even talk a little, but he falls over and dies. This scene is actually really sad, and one of the only moments in this damn movie that actually evokes some kind of emotion.

But ugh…then we have to go back to watching Bill Moseley and that Chili cook guy who is apparently the head of the family. These two characters are so damn annoying and grating to the ears that they had me hoping that Dennis Hopper would show back up again. Hell, even Stretch herself is hardly sympathetic anymore. All she does is scream and she’s the one who got herself into this whole thing in the first place, so what the hell should I feel sorry for her for? Luckily Hopper does show up – although any protagonist whose choice of attack is a chainsaw to the other guy’s ass as he runs away is kind of questionable, but I’ll overlook that if we can get this movie done with faster.

I think one of the funnier parts is how Dennis Hopper has this armory of chainsaws, all of different sizes, tucked into his uniform like guns or knives or something – I’m not sure they’re supposed to be used like that, dude. And FINALLY Stretch kills Bill Moseley and puts the audience out of their misery of his horrible performance. In a startlingly cartoonish climax, the old grandpa throws a hammer at Dennis Hopper, who ducks, so it hits Leatherface, who falls over and knocks the floor in on the Chili cook guy, who loses control of the bomb he was about to explode.

Wow. Did we just enter the fucking Looney Tunes?

But no, the movie isn’t done torturing us yet, so Bill Moseley comes back and fights with Stretch some more until she finally knocks him down the mountain and into a pipe like he’s a golf ball at a mini golf course. Phew.

This just sucks. It’s got a few redeeming factors and a couple scenes that were okay, but for the most part, it just sucks. It completely eschews the tension and atmosphere of the first movie by putting in a bunch of annoying fuckholes screaming and cackling all the time and it gets rid of the cool Texas outback setting in favor of a carnival funhouse that just isn’t nearly as impressive. There’s just nothing about this that works or creates any kind of fear. The acting is over the top and annoying, the plot is just boring and…well, that’s all I need to tell you why this sucks. I guess in between the first one and this one, director Tobe Hooper lost his marbles or just stopped giving a shit, because this just isn't any good at all. If you see a copy of this, spit on it. That's all, folks!

Review: Speed (1994)

Director: Jan de Bont

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111257/

"Oh! In two hundred years we've gone from "I regret but I have one life to give for my country" to "Fuck you!"?"

-Howard Payne

I’m going to have to write this review fast, before the bomb goes off. If I review slower than 50 mph, then we all go up in flames and I’ll never be able to reach the talked-about 100 reviews for the site! Speed is a movie made in 1994 starring Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock. Hopper is lame, Reeves is lamer and Bullock is cute. The plot revolves around a cop (Reeves) who has to stop a money-hungry psychopath (Hopper) from blowing up a bus. But indeed, it’s rigged like a game – the bus has to keep going at about 50 miles per hour, or else the bus will explode!

This movie is just full of tension. The plot moves fast and is full of excitement on every level. Reeves must find a way to stop the bomb and apprehend Hopper, and fast. I found the script corny and blatantly stupid at times, but even then, it wasn’t a major detractor, and I could overlook it once the movie kicked into gear. Everything in this movie that could possibly go wrong actually does happen – first they have to defuse a bomb in an elevator, then the hour-long bus escapade, and finally a deadly date in a subway car…all ending in some sort of explosion every time; how tiring must that get? I can only imagine how annoyed that must make Reeves…but then, he’s a lame actor anyway, and can’t properly convey annoyance to begin with. So all I can do is imagine anyway. Still, though. It’s worth considering the ramifications of a mind getting too used to explosions. Eventually, they must become trite.

Uh oh. I didn’t review it fast enough.

KABOOM!

Phew! Made it out in the nick of time through an extremely implausible and yet bad-ass stunt that you’d have to be either on drugs or as blandly heroic as Keanu Reeves to attempt. Now I can finish up this review properly…well, most of the end is Sandra Bullock carrying the entire movie alone while Dennis Hopper cackles and over-acts like a moron – but I suppose that’s kind of entertaining on its own. In a way detrimental to him, more than anything. But I still really enjoyed it. It’s a fun movie. It manages to create a lot of big, stupid explosions and a ton of gripping tension, and the fact that it can overcome the often lame acting and dialogue says a lot. Hey, I liked it. I’d probably watch it again. Just not too fast – I’ve still got some other stuff to review, too.

Review: Land of the Dead (2006)

Director: George A. Romero

Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento, Robert Joy

Website: http://www.universalstudiosentertainment.com/land-of-the-dead/

"They're just people."

-One Dumb Zombie Killer

You know what I don’t like? Being raped by alligators. You know what else I don’t like? Land of the Dead. UGH.

Okay, so we start off with what looks like a zombie convention as they stumble around in front of a building and play musical instruments. Gee, that’s…not threatening at all! They’re being watched by some normal people – or what this movie considers to be normal – named Riley, played by Simon Baker, and some other guy who gets killed off in a few minutes, so I won’t bother to learn his name. Riley is a Typical Depressed/Cynical Futuristic Dystopian Hero, making quips like “Aren’t we just pretending to be alive?” and “That’s what I like about you, you still believe in heaven.” This character is just delightful, isn’t he? He’s got all the personality of a goddamned paper clip. There’s one scene where he shoots a zombie and the guy next to him says “Nice shooting,” to which he replies, “Good shooting, Charlie. No such thing as nice shooting.” Great. So we’ve got a philosopher on our hands, too. Really glad this guy is our main character…ugh.

So they run into a burn victim named Charlie, played by Robert Joy, who does his best impersonation of what it would be like if zombies could talk and act like regular people, or if Nic Cage was a zombie, you take your pick. Okay, he’s mentally handicapped, and to be fair, he’s probably the best thing in this movie just for how unassuming and innocent he is even when he’s killing some fucking zombies, but it’s still kind of strange that they just randomly toss him in without any introduction…

Fuck it. We’re also introduced to our second in command, John Leguizamo, playing a guy named Cholo. His job is to ride motorcycles, perform hokey, overdone acting and give snarky replies to everything his leader Riley tells him. The apparent plan of this group is that they have a giant machine called Dead Reckoning that shoots off fireworks to distract the zombies so that they can kill them and raid the cities for supplies and food and stuff. Except apparently now the zombies are getting smarter and are able to think and even work together now, as is illustrated in one scene where this big black zombie helps his fellow zombies and pushes them out of the range of the gunfire. Oh no!...wait, I don’t care. The movie has given me no reason to care.

So the one sidekick guy from before gets bitten and shoots himself, and nobody seems to care except for Riley. Leguizamo and his buddies do some stupid motorcycle stunts in the middle of the street that should in all reality attract a lot of zombies to try and eat them, but I guess not in this movie. Having actual excitement might slow things down; you know the drill. And if they’re supposed to be so smart, how come these rebel guys aren’t killing more of them?

The basic story behind how the last fringes of humanity have survived in this post apocalyptic world is that they’ve walled off one specific city where the zombies can’t get to. The rich live in tall skyscrapers in nice homes while everyone else lives on the streets fending for food every way they can. We see Cholo and Riley returning from their mission as Riley chews out Cholo for celebrating after a good soldier just died. Cholo will hear none of it, and the scene is pretty much pointless.

Cholo goes up to one of the buildings to visit his supervisor Kaufman, and a random black guy almost kills him, telling him of something strange going on next door. So Cholo goes over and checks, finding a man who has hanged himself while his family for some reason did not hear him doing it. And then he turns into a zombie and bites his teenage son…huh. I don’t get it. So whenever people die, they just become zombies regardless of how they died? How does that work? Explanation please? None? Okay, fine, I’ll just…assume that the rope had some zombie blood caked on it and that it somehow got into his blood stream, infecting him as he died. There. It’s stupid, but it makes about as much sense as anything else in this goddamn movie!

Our next spectacle of this movie’s intellect comes when we see what the people of the city do with the zombies they captured – yes, they capture live zombies, because that could never go wrong…and to add insult to injury to the Romero legacy, here we see people taking pictures with them like they’re fucking circus attractions, and also shooting paintballs at them. And they use them in cage fights to bet money on, too! That’s…really weak. A lot of the stuff in this movie is like that. It’s just like, really? That’s what George Romero is giving us in 2006? C’mon. You can do better, man.

They throw in a prostitute played by the luscious Asia Argento, who is intended to be the ‘bait’ that the zombies fight over. Riley, while looking for a way to get his car back from a midget in a purple suit, notices this, and saves her, only for him, Charlie and the prostitute, whose name is Slack, to get arrested for killing the midget…yes, there are midgets in this post apocalyptic city. I don’t know why; that just seems funny to me that the movie would point that out. Between this and the retarded guy, they’re really pandering to the PC crowd, huh? Never thought I’d see the day a zombie movie did that. Equal rights for everyone to get murdered and eaten in a zombie flick, I guess…

But trouble’s afoot when we finally meet Kaufman, played by the late Dennis Hopper, in a performance that you will most likely forget five minutes after the end credits roll! Wait a second, Dennis Hopper? John Leguizamo? You’d be forgiven for thinking this was just a convention of B-minus list actors, but these two were also together in the much maligned Super Mario Bros. movie back in 1993 together. Who knew this would be their reunion? Let’s get some Goombas and mushrooms in here; maybe that would make this more interesting. Kaufman doesn’t want to let Cholo buy a room in his big building for no real reason, so Cholo gets PISSED OFF and rallies his men to steal Dead Reckoning and use it as leverage, planning to destroy the city and start a mutiny against him.

Bet you thought we forgot this one, huh Mr. Hopper?

So Riley, Charlie and Slack get released to go hunt him down, along with a few other mercenaries, two of which get killed off later without even doing anything…and we get about fifteen minutes of filler as Riley and his crew go hunting for Dead Reckoning. They come across a few parties of zombies who probably did not say grace before they sat down for their blood feasts, kill them, and move on. And while that’s going on, apparently the horde of zombies from outside the city breaks in rather easily, seeking to avenge their fallen zombie brothers.

…is it just me, or is the idea of cogent zombies who can actually think and form plans really lame? It’s not scary and it certainly doesn’t make for any kind of tension. It robs them of everything that was originally so interesting about them. Watching them assemble like some kind of army is just like “…huh?” What are we supposed to feel here? There is certainly no imminent terror. It’s just…well, weak. Zombies go swimming through the water…huh, well I don’t give a crap.

In a surprisingly, stupidly easy finish, Riley and pals get Dead Reckoning back from Cholo and then they go to fight off the zombie hordes. Cholo gets bitten and decides he wants to be a zombie…yawn, yawn, yawn, WHERE’S THE EXCITING STUFF? Get to it, movie! I’ve been to knitting classes more interesting than this movie. So Cholo goes after Kaufman, who has been abandoned in the parking garage. Kaufman is attacked by the big black zombie who actually pieces together in his rotting brain how to pour gasoline on the car and then throw a Molotov cocktail at it, blowing it to bits.

But not before this exchange: Cholo comes in, shadows on his face like the movie thinks it’s actually suspenseful as to whom he is, and Kaufman says, “No…you’re dead.” That’s a cliché and stupid line in itself, except that then he comes fully out of the shadows to reveal that he has become a zombie, to which Kaufman replies, “You really are dead,” right before Cholo bites him and they both get set on fire and blown to bits. Ha! Oh, Romero, you kidder, you. Always the comedian…oh, man, this is a bad movie.

Meanwhile, Riley and Charlie are marveling over how easy it was for the zombies to get in and eat everyone. They watch over a scene of death, destruction and flames as they have a moment’s consideration before they launch a missile and blow everything up. “They’re just people,” one woman with them says about the flesh eating demons from hell, as if there isn’t a reason to stop them from killing innocent people. But Riley tells him to do it, so Charlie presses the button and blows them up anyway. Hooray for destruction and violence!

But of course there has to be an uplifting ending for no reason, so we actually get some sympathy for the zombies – yes, really, sympathy for the goddamn zombies. That’s a new one. Yeah, have sympathy for them; they’re only killing everyone you know without any intention of stopping! You think they’ll really show you that same kindness the next time you’re under their mercy, you frigging idiots? What, is there going to be a sequel where these assholes form a Zombie Liberation Front dedicated to protecting the rights and safety of those who are not living and who eat brains to survive? Ugh, what a dumb idea. Riley doesn’t kill the head zombie because “he’s just looking for a place to go.” Maybe in a more compelling movie this could have been a good plot point, but in this movie, it’s just weak, and it wasn’t even a plot point for the entire movie anyway, so what the hell? They just...randomly introduce it at the end because apparently the movie needed a moral or something! Like everything else in this movie, the idea of sympathetic zombies is weak-ass, pussy crap for people who aren’t cool enough to watch the good Romero films from back in the day. Pff, pass me the vomit bag.

Land of the Dead is a huge waste of time! Nothing about this movie is exciting, nothing about it is scary and nothing about it merits a viewing at all, even if you’ve already seen all of the good zombie flicks. The acting is menial, the direction tame and indistinct and the plot is just weak. What happened, George Romero? How did you sink to such a gut-wrenchingly lame and pussified low as this movie? This is just shit, shit, shit all around, and the only way I can possibly recommend it to anyone is if you have absolutely no standards. Otherwise, you can just take a look at a pile of actual shit and you’d probably have something of equal worth. Putrid.