Hi, I’m George A. Romero and I have a very important message.
What if zombies really aren’t such terrible flesh-eating creatures as they seem to be? What if they are just like you and me, merely looking for somwehere to go (allow me to insert my favorite Old Country sarcasm: Vi har ingen lokal)? If that’s so, then I guess they aren’t slaughtering humans because they…need…brains…but because they need lebensraum for their dar-al-zombislam. And if so, what right do humans have to hold their ground against them? Any? A little?
If you think this post is a train wreck, then you haven’t seen George A. Romero’s latest zombie-movie George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero and written by George A. Romero, in which George A. Romero takes shots at George W. Bush.
In the movie, humans are taking cover in a triangular city walled off by two rivers and an electric fence. The city’s population is kept alive by the booty collected by a group of mercenaries with motorbikes, cool technicals, and a kick-ass rolling fortress called Dead Reckoning, complete with .50 cal machine gun bays. The group launches its raids from a not overly well-fortified outpost on the other side of the river from the city, connected by an underground tunnel.
The group’s commander is Riley, a honest man but also somewhat of a misanthropic loner whose side kick is the disfigured, slow-witted, sharp-shooter Charlie. Like any good liberal, Riley dreams of going north, to - you guessed it - Canada. The group’s second in command is Cholo, who also serves as Kaufman’s henchman. Kaufman (Dennis Hopper, taking one for the bank account) is an entrepreneur of the zombie-induced apocalypse: He claims to have walled off the city, arranged the security detail and set up the raiding party. His signature contribution is Fiddler’s Green, a luxurious high rise that’s - quite needlessly when you think about - promoted through Robo Cop-style commercials. Fiddler’s Green is the in place for the rich, while the rest of the population is seemingly homeless.
Cholo aspires to get an apartment in the sky rise, but his dream is shattered when Kaufman lets him know in an oddly confrontational manner that the Fiddler’s Green is no place for him.
The pissed off Cholo hijacks Dead Reckoning and threatens to level the Fiddler’s Green unless he gets - five million dollars. Or was it 2? Whatever. Kaufman blurts out that “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” and asks Riley to get the killing machine back before Cholo goes apeshit on the town. Hijinks ensue. Zombies storm the city. Kaufman gets his comeuppance, along with the rest of the fat cats in the Fiddler’s Green. Bodies are torn apart. Riley and his merry multicultural band retake the Reckoning, save what remains of the city and then heads off to Canada while setting off fireworks (really).
Romero fumbles most everything in the movie. His city resembles Latin America far more than America, in spite of its inhabitants being overwhelmingly anglo-white (including an Irish anti-Kaufman resistance leader). For a guy who somehow managed to save a city from the zombie hordes, Kaufman is surprisingly clumsy in his dealings with those who get their hands dirty for him. That’s not very dubyaish at all. What should have been an awsome zombie ransacking of the city become a series of lacklusterly edited gore scenes without much rhyme or reason. After all, a good deal of the fun with zombie movies is pondering that age-old question what you gonna do, what you gonna do when the dead come for you? Sitting at an upscale bar sipping parasol drinks until the very last second is a very unsatisfactory answer. Why the city-dwellers don’t spend a good of their time strengthening and expanding the city walls is never explained. Since Kaufman owns the place, you’d think he’d be very mindful of protecting it.
But then again, you’d think George A. Romero would be intrested in protecting his legacy. Apparently he isn’t.
UPDATE: If you want to look for similarities between the city in the movie and the real world, try Sarajevo during the Bosnian Civil War in the mid-1990’s. There the whole crooked-criminal-running-the-show thing works much better. The constant threat of death and societal collapse were probably far greater there than they are in post-9/11 America. You might argue that the city is simply a metaphor, and that is obviously the case, it’s just that the metaphor works so much better on Sarajevo under siege than on America at war.
