When I heard George A. Romero released another zombie movie I had high hopes being a fan of his work, and although his 2004 re-release of Dawn of The Dead did no justice to the original release from 1978 I still thought he would have gotten his stuff together for this film. Unfortunately I was way off base and set myself up for a big let down.

A lot of zombie films end when its clear that they have taken over or the humans are winning the battle and have gotten to safety; well if you've ever wondered what happened next, Land of The Dead tells you. The movie starts out showing some scroungers whose sole job is to go into infected areas filled with zombies and scavenge medicine, food, and any necessities they can find that they then bring back to their city that's guarded with soldiers on one side and surrounded by water on the other three. But when Riley (Simon Baker) goes out scouting he notices something he hasn't seen before, the zombies are pretending to be uninfected and faking a functioning town.

So before his last trip out Riley warns his "co-worker" Cholo (John Leguizamo) who's also on his last night, to be extra careful. But being that Cholo's obviously a spirited renegade type he takes this warning with a grain of salt leading to the death of another member of the team as well as the loss of a machine gun to a zombie. So unbeknownst to the escaping team their night's activities have set off a zombie uprising led by a character known only as big daddy (Eugene Clark) who leads the undead to an attack on the city. Basically the citizens are right back where they started. Obviously there's more to the plot than this, but I feel putting anymore thought into its description is just a waste of time.

Now I consider myself a fan of zombie movies and I don't want to piss off any zombie fanatics out there that support this film, but I have to ask Romero "what the hell happened?" He has the talent for these kinds of films obviously, but it's not showing in his latest endeavor. Zombie movies often slip in some slight changes to the whole undead mythos as we know them but I felt that Romero went overboard with this movie - a zombie to me is an undead, slow moving creature that has lost all of his motor skills other than his ability to walk (slowly and poorly) and his new found lust for blood and flesh of the living and that's it. But in this movie the zombies have compassion, the ability to communicate with each other, the recognition of authority in their leader and the debated ability to "swim", so when you combine all the new traits and abilities here, all I see is a slow moving human. It was more like Land of the senior citizens than anything. Towards the end of the film when the main zombie and the main character Riley make eye contact at a distance they share a moment that implies that they are letting each other go there own way and they have some kind of mutual respect for one another. That concept is ridiculous if you believe every other zombie made by Romero - to say that a zombie wants or feels anything but the lust for flesh and the death of anything human is just too far removed from what fans of the genre have come to believe or know.

The saddest part of Land of The Dead is that it has the making for a great movie - there's first rate actors that include Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Simon Baker, And John Leguizamo to name a few and their acting was fine. The special effects aren't horrible and the plot has something to it showing how people might be able to co-exist with zombies and showing also how the rich live in comparison to the poor. They also introduced a great weapon called Dead Reckoning which is a tank/truck that defends the city and includes some bad-ass weapons stretched out within the length of 3 big rigs. So all these things combined have the makings for a great movie but with all the extreme changes that have been made to the way zombies act it's just not enough.

Now don't get me wrong I'm no authority on zombies, but the idea of the undead has been around entirely too long to go changing the rules now. And I'm not against change either but if you want it to be believable then it should be a little at a time not all at once or it will just ruin a film as I felt it did in this one. In my opinion watching this movie is a waste of time and will probably irritate you as much as it did me. Land of The Dead Is out on DVD in December of 2005 it has a runtime of 93 minutes and is rated R.