The plot in a nutshell
In the fourth film of George A. Romero's Zombie series, there's something new amiss. The Zombies are getting smarter, but the humans certainly aren't.

This film is set in the U.S., in what I assumed was New York based on the topography (EDIT - I've since learned it's based on Pittsburgh), but which is never really stated. The humans live in the city, safe on three sides due to rivers, and on the fourth protected by a huge electric fence, guarded by folks with guns. Most people in the city live in basic slums, but Kaufman (played by Dennis Hopper) has his Fiddler's Green, a skyscraper community of wealthy living for the select few. The film centers around two men that work for Hopper, at least initially - Cholo (John Lequizamo) and Riley (Simon Baker, best known as TV's The Guardian). 

Romero's zombies return to the usual garden variety, at least at first. Forget about those zombies in the remade Dawn of the Dead, who, no matter how fat and out of shape in life somehow transformed into high school track stars after death. These zombies lumber along as slow and relentless as ever, single minded in their determination to snack on the flesh of the living. But this time around, there's a new zombie in town - Big Daddy. We know that's his name because that's what it says on the gas station attendant coveralls he's wearing.

Big Daddy is the zombie equivalent of Albert Einstein. He's just a tad smarter than everyone else, and he's willing to share his extra knowledge with the others, elevating them above the ordinary mindless walking corpse. Not a lot mind you, which is a wise move on Romero's part, but enough to accomplish two things. First, this new found basic intelligence - and I mean basic - allows the zombies to become a new type of threat. And two, this also gives them a personality, and along with it, a willingness on the part of the viewer to actually identify with their plight, at least at a primitive level.

That's important, because where Night of the Living Dead was a film about race relations, and Dawn of the Dead was about rampant consumerism, and Day of the Dead was about a military state and it's abuses, this film is about a class war. Hopper represents all that is wrong with wealth, and the zombies represent the lowest class abused by that wealth. Of course we also get to see how Hopper treats the humans he believes to be below him, but even those humans desecrate and kill the zombies as though they were garbage. Not surprising, considering that they have always been nothing more than animated corpses before, but by providing some basic intelligence in several key zombies, you start to actually feel for them. Oh, not a lot - you won't be shedding any tears over their fate - but enough for Romero to make his basic point.

Romero's points are always broad and sweeping. If you're looking for deep, seriously thought provoking commentary on our social structure, don't go to a Romero zombie flick to get your fix. Yes, every one of his films does deal with social commentary, but at a very high level, in the most obvious of ways. And at that level, this film again works.

The acting is solid all around, but Hopper is the stand out. Fans of the actor won't be surprised by that though, or by his ability to bring a level of sleaze to an already sleazy character. He gets the best lines of the film, and does the most with them.

Leguizamo is also good, but let's not lose sight of the fact that this is a zombie movie, not an film with Academy Award aspirations. Everyone does what they need to do to make their characters believable, and not too over the top, while sticking with the basic premise.

If you're just looking to see some cool zombie effects, then don't miss this film. Once again, Tom Savini does some amazing work (and shows up in a cameo that will be very reminiscent of the original Dawn of the Dead - and with good reason). (EDIT - turns out that while he did a cameo, he didn't do the zombie effects.  Odd, but it was Greg Nicotero.)  There aren't just rotting zombies here - there are people in all sorts of stages of rot and deterioration, and the effects are excellent. There's oodles of gore and blood, but unlike his first two zombie films, its more about meeting expectations than breaking ground.

Rating - Qualified Hit the theater.
I'm qualifying this positive review - if you don't like zombie flics, and aren't particularly interested in seeing them eat the flesh of the living in all its gory details, don't go to a Romero zombie movie.

On the other hand, if you love zombie movies, Romero explores them like nobody else. This flick deserves the big screen treatment if for no other reason than one amazingly cool shot of the city streets that will remind you of your kitchen floor when someone spilled kool-aid, and didn't clean it up very well.

For those looking for interesting cameo's, don't forget to keep an eye out for Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright from Shaun of the Dead...

Spoiler Laden Thoughts
Now it's time to discuss all those nifty spoilers...

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Leguizamos' switch to the other team and his final battle with Hopper should be no real surprise, but perhaps the way it ends - at the hands of Big Daddy - will be. That was a nice twist, and by making you concentrate on the obvious, you actually forgot all about Big Daddy and his sudden departure. That helped make his intelligent attack all the more interesting.

Of course, I'm not quite sure how he put together that gas and fire make a big explosion. He did see the gas explode earlier though at the initial gates to the city, but that appeared to be due to the gun fire rather than open flame. That might just be a case of editing and memory working against me though.

Some folks aren't going to like this turn toward intelligence. It does seem that had they just shot Big Daddy in that first pass through, they pretty much would have solved the problem. Clearly Romero is a fan of the 'great man' theory of social progress. The compassion portrayed by Riley at the end of the film, when he had another opportunity to take out Big Daddy, seemed odd and out of place though, and weirdly forced. Sure, Romero had to develop some level of compassion for the zombies for the whole rich/poor commentary of the film to work, but taking it to that level still seemed oddly out of place.

I had a bit of a hard time with the whole 'feelings' thing with Big Daddy as well. It appears that he's actually concerned for his fellow zombies, and on more than one occasion shows compassion and caring for their situation. I had more trouble buying into that then the idea of them picking up basic skills, since the basic skills all made sense and didn't require any extreme leaps of intelligence. When Big Daddy figures out things out, it tends to be of the simple "observe, and repeat" type of learning, rather than making connections that are more complex. But the introduction of emotions was more difficult for me to swallow, but was still handled well enough that by the end I found myself buying into the premise.