After a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, the city is walled off and abandoned to the undead. While the displaced citizens hunker in rundown refugee camps outside the perimeter wall, a veritable army of the dead throngs the Strip. Not to worry, though: a quick tactical nuke will soon be taking care of the problem. That is rather inconvenient for billionaire Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), as he has $200m stashed in casino vault that he’d really rather not see atomized. As is the way of such things, he recruits ex-soldier and top notch short order cook Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) to put together a ragtag team for a daring heist… and that’s your lot, really.
It’s hard to remember the last time a Zack Snyder film could be legitimately described as fun, but Army of the Dead is easily his most purely enjoyable flick since, oh, at least 300 and arguably his remake of Dawn of the Dead. This is a gleefully gory romp that assumes the audience is canny enough to be across their zombie lore, as well as the raft of films Zack is, er, homaging – everything from Aliens to Escape From New York, An American Werewolf in London to Apocalypse Now. It’s a groovy, gutsy good time that skates by on sheer charm and chutzpah for the most part, as long as you don’t think too hard about some of the logic leaps and broader implications of what the narrative is doing and saying (and besides, those leaps aren’t that long in the final analysis.
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