Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead
Promotional poster for Land of the Dead
Directed by	George A. Romero
Written by	George A. Romero
Produced by	Steve Barnett
Starring	Simon Baker John Leguizamo Dennis Hopper Asia Argento
Cinematography	Miroslaw Baszak
Edited by	Michael Doherty
Music by	Reinhold Heil Johnny Klimek
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release dates	June 24, 2005 August 4, 2005 September 23, 2005
Running time	93 min.
Language	English
Budget	$16,000,000

Land of the Dead (also known as George A. Romero's Land of the Dead) is the fourth in George A. Romero's "Dead Series" started by Night of the Living Dead, which continued with the films Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead.

Plot

Some time ago, an unimaginable disaster destroyed much of human civilization: the recently dead inexplicably began returning to life and taking the lives of their living siblings. These "zombies" multiplied rapidly by adding to their ranks with every new victim. Many years later, the still-living in the vicinity have fled to the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a feudal-like government has taken over. Bordered on three sides by rivers and on the other by an electric barricade, the city has become a sanctuary against the undead threat. Fiddler's Green, the center of this fortress city, is where the rich and powerful live in luxury while the rest of the local survivors live in poverty around them. Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), a tyrannical businessman, rules with an iron fist and overwhelming firepower.

In order to ensure his dominance and upscale lifestyle, Kaufman financed the construction of Dead Reckoning, a heavily armored vehicle that can venture out into the zombie-populated territory with relative ease. Armed with heavy remote-controlled external machine guns, missile launchers, video cameras to spot zombies on the sides, and a fireworks' launcher to distract the zombies: zombies, like humans, are fascinated by fireworks and will ignore the humans to watch them. Riley Denbo (Simon Baker), the designer of Dead Reckoning and leader of the expeditions to retrieve salvageable goods, has decided to retire and leave the safety of the city. Unlike Kaufman, Riley is respected by the citizens of the fortress city for his work to protect them from a dangerous world. However, after a series of incidents, Riley winds up in jail with his best friend Charlie Houk (Robert Joy), a slow witted member of the Dead Reckoning team who happens to be a crack shot with his old M1 Carbine, and Slack (Asia Argento), a female soldier who has been pressed into prostitution and who was almost killed in a recent cage match with a pair of zombies. It was freeing Slack from the cage that led to the circumstances of Riley's incarceration.

Meanwhile, Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo), the cocky second in command of the Dead Reckoning team, having been denied the opportunity to buy an apartment in Fiddler's Green by Kaufman, has gone renegade. Having his dreams to live in Fiddler's Green shattered by Kaufman — for whom he has been secretly employed (one of his tasks being the disposal of the corpses of Kaufman's murdered enemies) — Cholo is out to even the score. He threatens to destroy Fiddler's Green with Dead Reckoning — which he has hijacked with some of its crew — unless his demands are met. Kaufman turns to Riley to stop Cholo, which is how Riley, Slack, and Charlie are released from prison. A trio of soldiers, Pilsbury, Motown, and Manolete, are assigned to assist them, but their mission is to recapture Dead Reckoning, whether Riley and his allies want them to or not. Manolete is soon bitten, and Motown later tries to kill Cholo only to be killed herself by a zombie, while Pilsbury changes sides and starts helping Charlie and Slack. As Riley finally catches Cholo, he convinces him to allow him to take Dead Reckoning and leave the city to head north, leaving Cholo and his "partner in crime," Foxy, with a truck to go west. Shortly after this Cholo is bitten by a zombie. Rather than be shot immediately and never become a zombie, Cholo chooses to "see how the other half lives", so Cholo wished Foxy luck, and let him drive off without him.

Meanwhile, the zombies are beginning to regain vestigal memories of their former lives: a brass band blows ineffectively on their aging horns, a cheerleader carries her pompoms, a dead couple walk hand-in-hand, and a gas station attendant with the name tag "Big Daddy" lumbers out every time someone trips the pump bell. Big Daddy is particularly intelligent for a zombie (in a continuance of the "Bub" plot-line from Day of the Dead), quickly learning to operate a stolen firearm and becoming the undead protagonist amongst his fellow zombies. He also overcomes the effect of the fireworks, which the other zombies also do after being exposed again. Directing his fellow zombies, Big Daddy leads an attack on the human city in retaliation for the constant raids carried out by Dead Reckoning. With the electric fences proving impregnable to the zombies: Big Daddy realizes that they can simply walk across the riverbed without drowning.

The center of the carnage takes place at Fiddler's Green, where the zombies converge. Kaufman witnesses his kingdom disintegrating before his very eyes as the zombies overcome the humans in a bloody massacre. As the zombies overtake the city, the humans discover the electric fence defenses used to keep the zombies out have become walls preventing their escape.

As retribution after being shot by Kaufman, Big Daddy trails the fleeing despot to an underground garage where Kaufman plans to escape. Big Daddy finds Kaufman locked in his car next to a gas pump and, in a moment of undead "revelation," begins pumping gas into the cab through a hole in the windshield. Apparently satisfied, he lumbers out of the garage.

Now a member of the undead, Cholo has located Kaufman. Cholo shoots at Kaufman (poorly) before grappling with him. However, Big Daddy returns and once again displays his intelligence by rolling a burning road flare toward Kaufman's gasoline-soaked vehicle. It explodes, hurling Kaufman and the undead Cholo away.

Meanwhile, Denbo and Dead Reckoning have fought to free the inhabitants of the now-overrun city. At the electric fence, the crew discovers a massacre; with nowhere to run, the citizens fell victim to the zombies. After destroying the fence and relieving the victims from their final agony, the crew is now despondent, since it appears as if the city has been wiped out. However, most of the city's lower-class inhabitants emerge from the carnage. While many had simply run, and died, these others hid, and emerged unscathed. With the destruction caused by the zombies, the class system no longer exists, leveling the playing field for the lower-class. The zombies withdraw instead of attacking them.

Riley orders Pretty Boy (Joanne Boland), the navigator of Dead Reckoning to refrain from shooting Big Daddy with the vehicle's weaponry as the zombies leave, because he realizes that, like them, he's "just looking for a place to go." Riley and his friends leave the city in Dead Reckoning, striking out for Canada. As they leave, they fire all of Dead Reckoning's fireworks in a display of celebration.

Cast

Actor	Role
Simon Baker	Riley Denbo
John Leguizamo	Cholo DeMora
Asia Argento	Slack
Robert Joy	Charlie Houk
Dennis Hopper	Paul Kaufman
Eugene Clark	"Big Daddy"
Pedro Miguel Arce	"Pillsbury"
Joanne Boland	"Pretty Boy"
Tony Nappo	"Foxy"
Krista Bridges	"Motown"
Sasha Roiz	"Manolete"

Reaction

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars for what he considered its skillful and creative allusions, something that he argued was pervasive among Romero's previous three installments that contained numerous satirical metaphors to the reality of American life. In this installment Ebert noted the similarities between the fireworks mesmerizing the zombies and the shock and awe tactics applied during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and the movie's distinction between the rich and poor, those that live in Fiddler's Green and those that live in the slums, something he considered to be Romero's take on the rising gap between rich and poor in America. Michael Wilmington of Chicago Tribune awarded the film four stars, writing, "It's another hard-edged, funny, playfully perverse and violent exercise in movie fear and loathing, with an increasingly dark take on a world spinning out of control. By now, Romero has become a classicist who uses character and dialogue as much as stomach-turning special effects to achieve his shivers."

Several film-makers including Eli Roth and Guillermo Del Toro paid tribute to George Romero in a "Land of the Dead" special. Guillermo Del Toro said: "Finally someone was smart enough to realize that it was about time, and gave George the tools. It should be a cause of celebration amongst all of us that Michelangelo has started another ceiling. It's really a momentous occasion ..."

Overall critical reaction was mostly positive; the film received very favorable reviews from The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Premiere (magazine), Variety, Slate and Los Angeles Times. The film earned a 74% positive rating at the Rotten Tomatoes movie-review compilation website (though the "Cream of the Crop" critics' reactions were slightly more mixed, giving the film a 68% rating overall).

Rating

It is the first movie in the series to receive an MPAA rating for its theatrical release. Romero had said for years that he would film two versions; an R rated cut for the theatres and first DVD, and an unrated cut for the second DVD release. Both DVDs were released in the U.S. on October 18, 2005. Rumors suggested that Romero shot alternate, less explicit, gore scenes for the theatrical release, but this is not entirely accurate. The more extreme instances of gore (e.g a woman having her navel piercing graphically torn out by a zombie) were obscured by foreground elements filmed on bluescreen, so that these overlayed elements could be easily removed for the unrated DVD. Other ways to obscure blood in order to get an R-rating were achieved by simply trimming the grislier shots by a few seconds, by digitally repainting blood so that it is more black than red, or by digitally painting the blood out altogether. The Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario gave both the theatrical version and DVD version a rating of 18A, though it was only given a 13+ rating in Quebec. In the UK the BBFC gave it a 15 certificate for both the theatrical version and the unrated version. (The UK "Director's Cut" DVD was rated 18 due to extras being rated higher than the feature itself). In Germany, both the theatrical and unrated versions were rated 18, rendering the purpose of the cut theatrical version redundant. As such, only the unrated version was widely available in Germany.

Trivia

• Earlier script titles included Dusk of the Dead, Dead City and Dead Reckoning. Romero said in an interview [1] that one of the first potential film studios (20th Century Fox) wanted the film to be titled Night of the Living Dead. He refused, wanting to use the title Dead Reckoning, and the studio then wanted to title it Night of the Living Dead: Dead Reckoning. It turned out that Fox sought to own the rights to Night of the Living Dead, and Romero decided not to do business with them.
• Asia Argento, who plays Slack in this movie, is the daughter of the famous Italian horror movie director Dario Argento, who was also the producer of Romero's second Dead movie, Dawn of the Dead.
• Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have cameos as the photo zombies, due to Romero's love of their affectionate zombie send-up Shaun of the Dead. They also appear on the official movie poster and Director's Cut DVD.
• Tom Savini can be briefly seen as a zombie (credited as "Machete Zombie"), reprising his character Blades from Dawn of the Dead. This marks the first time an actor has reprised a role in a Romero zombie movie.
• It could also be argued that the Santa zombie seen briefly outside Dead Reckoning near the end of the film is the Santa biker from Dawn of the Dead, as Romero alludes to on the DVD commentary.
• Gregory Nicotero, who is the second unit director, make-up artist and special effects supervisor for the film, also belongs to the small elite of people who have appeared in more than one of Romero's zombie movies. He is the bridgekeeper zombie in Land of the Dead, while playing Private Johnson in Day of the Dead.
• Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green, a video game based on the movie was released for Xbox and PC on October 18, 2005.
• At the 16th edition of Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights in 2006, a show featuring the vehicle Robosaurus borrowed heavily from the film, including the use of fireworks to distract approaching zombies and the words "Dead Reckoning" painted on the side of Robosaurus.
• Director George Romero's voice can be heard as one of the puppeteers in the "Punch & Judy" stand in the village, shouting "Take that, you smelly zombie!"
• Dennis Hopper's character, Paul Kaufman, is named after fellow director Lloyd Kaufman of Troma studios fame.
• George Romero's daughter, Christina Romero, makes an appearance as a soldier and is credited as the "High noon soldier"
• Romero used the Universal logo of the 1930s as a way of paying tribute to the classic Universal horror films of that period.
• The movie was banned in Ukraine.
• 115 people (and zombies) die in the film.

See also

• List of zombie films

External links

• The Official Land of the Dead Website from Universal
• Land of the Dead at IMDb
• Template:Movie-Tome
• Land of the Dead at Rotten Tomatoes
• Land of the Dead at Metacritic
• Land of the Dead at Box Office Mojo
• Sequel Talks
• Land of the Dead Fictional Book includes quotes from actual Land actors
• George Romero interview for Land Of The Dead