Army of the Dead 4K 2021 NF WEBRip 2160p

The film tells about the spread of the zombie virus across Las Vegas, and the city is not coping with the plague. Six years later, the owner of the former casino hires soldiers to take the money from his safe.

Army of the Dead 4K Review
Former sin city Las Vegas is now the capital of the walking dead. Several years ago, a strategically important zombie slipped out from under the noses of the military, who bit down all the inhabitants and turned them into his minions. The government, apparently familiar with Romero's films, quickly realized that the area needed to be closed urgently. And not even quarantined: just put shipping containers around the perimeter and let the corpses rule themselves outside the wall. Warrior Scott (Dave Batista) is one of those who participated in the control sweep of the infected area and pulled out the remaining people from occupied Vegas. The state paid him an allowance, awarded him with insignia and sent him to drift in search of another job. Now a man fries burgers in a cheap eatery and cannot make peace with his daughter, but fate gives him a second chance. More precisely, not even fate, but a rich businessman who came up with the idea of ​​encircling the city of the dead a couple of days before its planned explosion: you just need to assemble a team, sneak into Vegas and open the safe where millions of dollars lie.

Scott chooses partners for himself according to all the canons of the genre: an old friend in arms (Ana de la Reguera), a burglar (Matthias Schweighöfer), a pilot (Tig Notaro), a zombie Vegas connoisseur (a typical Cameronian strong heroine performed by the charming Nora Arnezeder) and others charismatic acquaintances. Although, contrary to his wishes, Martin (Garrett Dillahunt) is also added to the detachment - a six businessman who was assigned, apparently, to control the entire operation. And another unexpected replenishment is the hero's daughter - a volunteer at a camp near the city, looking for a missing girlfriend. Having gathered and assigned roles, the team enters Vegas territory: there is no turning back, and they will need to return as soon as possible, otherwise the nuclear missile will blow the territory and the thieves along with it.

It's amazing how productive and successful in terms of, in fact, the quality of films, 2021 came out for Zack Snyder. The same Snyder who, after the failure of the Justice League and the suicide of his daughter, went underground for 4 years. And even more so that Snyder, who is so hated by critics from all over the world - devoid of a sense of proportion, pretentious, finally, absolutely non-ironic (his famous biblical references and meaningful slow-mo are immediately remembered). First up is the magnum opus, a four-hour director's cut of a superhero epic, tainted at the time by studio bosses. And now here's a return to basics: given the director's debut film (a remake of Romer's classic "Dawn of the Dead"), "Army" beautifully frames the entire author's filmography. From a bright start and a black bar to re-recognition, a kind of double comeback within a couple of months.

Army of the Dead is becoming a landmark film in several ways. We have already talked about the first - a return to the origins, that is. The second is also the formation of Snyder as an almost sole author at the moment (exactly what the author) of an old school action game. Previously, Michael Bay could argue with him, but in recent years he is somehow amazingly measured: in 5 years the director has shot only two films, one of which is the next Transformers. But old Zack continues to bend his line and shoot about superheroes as if he was filming the New Testament, and about zombies, as if he was still a debutant who came out of the clips of ZZ Top and Morrissey. His style, of course, is finally formed, there is no talk of any amateurish tricks of the young director, but "Army of the Dead" is a movie created with the enthusiasm of a beginner.

As in Dawn of the Dead, zombies for Snyder are nothing more than a genre construct. No, of course, his debut was criticized for pro-Bush overtones, and in the new film it is easy to see parallels between the fenced-in Vegas and the Trump wall near Mexico, but in fact all these thoughts are almost not developed further. There is, say, a commentary on the connection between militarism and capitalism, although even here it is unlikely that it will be possible to make something interesting out of it - for more than 50 years of the existence of walking corpses in the cinema (if we take Romero's debut, and not the antediluvian film of Jacques Tourneur ) the image of a zombie was so mutilated that there was no living space left on the dead. So Snyder has to choose other paths, making offensive insolent jokes, inserting The Cranberries' Zombie in the final in a completely different, ironic context, and commenting on the phenomenon of mass cinema. The latter is revealed in general very stupidly, but terribly cute: the heroes, making their way to the safe, see corpses at the grate - moreover, dressed in the same way as Scott's entire detachment. One of them suggests that they are on Groundhog Day, an endless reproduction of the same plots, where each of the heroes is doomed to die and be reborn. Surely someone, and Zach Snyder perfectly understands the secret of the success of action films and can laugh at the format of the monotonous mainstream cinema. Or, on the contrary, to confess your love for all of his archetypes.

Although Snyder is not limited to shameless youthful irony. He is generally much smarter than he seems, and always deftly navigates the paths and plots. Not only are the zombies modified (there are alphas and omegas, someone moves quickly, and someone even sleeps until sunlight falls on him), but also socially organized. It turns out that in Las Vegas there is a whole state of the walking dead with its rituals, castes and, even crazier, even attempts to procreate. Rotten corpses, possessed by a lust for brains, are the last century, and human monsters are the hit of the season. Again, nothing supernatural, Romero already interpreted the image of a zombie, but not only Snyder finds consolation in nostalgia and love for the classics, but, as experience shows, the entire modern public.

And now with all these models, Zach Snyder begins to play for two and a half hours. Changes lenses in cameras, mixes episodes under his favorite clip editing, embeds (although he rather flaunts - these motives are so obvious in the film) biblical and antique references. He has to be compared with Michael Bay not because of the furious action, where everything explodes, falls and thunders, but because of the filling of each of the scenes. The two of them, in general, try to fill even the simplest plots (in the case of Army of the Dead, a robbery story mixed with a zombie horror movie) not only to fill with bizarre details, but also to film them like real artists. Some essayists consider Bay to be a representative of neo-baroque, and if we nevertheless agree with the director's belonging to this style, then it would be fair to say that almost the only one who continues to develop this magnificent gigantic style is Zach Snyder, perhaps the last formalist in crazy Hollywood blockbusters (Nolan is not considered, he is too restrained for this).

In general, it does not matter what the director is filming аbout: in his stories about superheroes, and about zombies, and about, after all, cartoon owls, there is one thing in common - these are always the films of Zach Snyder. The style has already formed into a brand, the name into a set of recognizable techniques. Someone can compare this with the "Made In China" label on a Chinese copy of sweatpants, someone can call it the most quality mark, but it seems, whatever the attitude towards Snyder, you will have to put up with the fact that his brand will flood all the "counters" of streaming and cinemas for a long time. As long as, I think, the director's touching reflection on parenting: having lost a child, the director for the second film in a row reflects on fathers and children. And fortunately, in the "Army of the Dead" he finds some kind of comfort for himself: mistakes of the past cannot be redeemed, but all these toy characters (including zombies) in his hands after the tragedy have become, perhaps, more sensual, closer to the present people. In other words, they descended from heaven, which Snyder looked at so reverently throughout his career as a superhero director, to earth.

Audio
English: Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos 5.1

Subtitles
English [CC], German, Japanese, Greek, German [CC], Hungarian, Spanish, Italian [CC], Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), European Spanish, Spanish [CC], Swedish, Norwegian Bokmal, Croatian, Dutch, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Italian, Danish, English [Forced], Brazilian Portuguese [CC], Finnish, Ukrainian, French [CC], Hebrew, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Portuguese, Hindi [CC], Arabic, Malay, Czech, Romanian.