On what seems to be another reoccurring theme, it’s week 2 of “Throw everything in a bin and see what happens” Film month. This time, it’s Ivan Drago, zombies, robots, Asians, and an overacting Aussie thrown together in Malaysia, and you get this piece of cinema right here. Somehow, SHARKNADO deserves the blame for all this.
The Story
Following a deadly viral outbreak, private military soldier Max Gatling leads a handful of survivors and a ragtag band of robots against an army of the infected.
The Cast
Dolph Lundgren as Max Gatling, soldier for hire who’s been sent into a no man’s land on a mission that seems more FUBAR by the minute.
Melanie Zanetti as Jude, a survivor in the city and the vital element in Gatling’s mission into hell.
Matt Doran as Reese, a survivor who is close with Jude and is caught in this world of secrets and mystery.
David Field as Duke, the leader of the group of survivors, with a big dose of survivor’s guilt and jealousy over new blood invading his territory.
The Dissection
For some reason or another, it seems like a lot of studios in the DVD market decided that the best people to hire for movies are people with massive ADD issues. Between the last movie reviewed here, SEAL PATROL, and this one, it just seems like no one can focus on one single idea for an entire length of a film.
Gatling (Lundgren) seeing the consequences of a failed smash and grab.
The thing about a film like this is that, this actually has some merit in the idea department. You take Dolph Lundgren, pit him in the middle of the zombie apocalypse with robots, and you just press record on the camera. And, sure, you do get that in here. But you also get at least 8 or 9 plots mixed together and this mish-mash of various story elements, twists, turns, and various other stuff thrown into the mix, tha all it really leads to is fatigue.
The movie takes about 15 minutes to get to the opening credits, and any kind of set up in the opening scene the movie was building up leads to either nothing or practically nothing. The film then just works on something that can be coined REINDEER GAMES logic, just throwing plot point after plot point, new plot element after new plot element one after the other for the entire films run time. It’s suppose to keep the audience interested, but it actually does the opposite, and just leads to nothing in the film really mattering.
This doesn’t even get into the film itself. It’s a standard low budget zombie film, but it scores a few point in certain aspects like the location and some interesting set pieces. It does lose some in the special effects being average at best, and kind of laughable at worst. The characters don’t really matter, a lot of them never developed beyond one note aspects. The movie also never bothers to actually explain a lot of details in the film.
Gatling: "Why do you have machine guns for hands?" Robot: "Why do you have paintball pads for body armor?"
This film would have been better served being chopped up into pieces, and taking a piece and expanding it to it’s own film. You want to make a film revolving a lone wolf soldier in zombie hell tracking someone down? Make that. You want to make a zombie vs robot brawl film? Make that. You want to make a sort of survivor’s story of life after the end? Make that. Make a suspense thriller around a zombie outbreak and cause? Yeah, make that. But don’t shove them all together and expect it to be coherent.
On the DVD, it’s got a few trailers for other films by Anchor Bay, and subtitles for English and Spanish. The sole extra in the film is a behind the scenes feature, titled “Battling the Damned”, that is a few minutes of the shooting and method.
The Verdict
In total, it’s a mess of a film. There are several interesting ideas in the film, to be sure, but the film spends little time to actually develop them beyond the introduction and eventually makes none of it matter by the time the credits roll. Overall, it’s not worth your time.