- Director: Zack Snyder
- Writers: Zack Snyder, Shay Hatten, Joby Harold
- Stars: Dave BautistaElla PurnellAna de la Reguera
- Run Time: 2 Hours 28 Minutes
Synopsis
A convoy of military transports drives through the desert away from Area 51 as the drivers guess at what it is that they’re hauling— It’s something majorly secret, they know that much. Meanwhile, a “Just married” couple drives into Las Vegas. The couple has while-you’re-driving-sex, at least until they run the entire convoy off the road. The surviving soldiers call for a medieval and approach the container they were carrying, which is now… open. It’s the Hulk! OK, it’s not, but it may as well be the way the bullets don’t work.
Zombie Hulk quickly kills them all and turns them into zombies as well. They all see the lights of Las Vegas and head that way. Soon, we see zombie showgirls eating a Liberace act. Soon, the government bombs everything. We then get closeups of various people fighting zombies as “Viva Las Vegas” plays. As the song winds down, we see that the city has been walled in and millions of zombies are trapped inside. The President decides to nuke the city on the 4th of July.
Scott Ward gets a visitor from Mr. Tanaka. Tanaka tells Ward about 200 million dollars buried in the city. He wants Ward and a team to go inland get the money. They have 96 hours before the bomb drops, and Ward can keep 50 million dollars if he does it. Ward still has nightmares about killing his own infected wife, but he agrees. Ward goes to talk to his friends Maria and Vander, who he invites onto his team. Peters is a helicopter pilot, Mikey is a gangster, and Dieter is a safecracker. Tanaka explains that “This should be a simple in-and-out,” and he does make it sounds really easy. Martin, Tanaka’s chief of security, will also be going along.
Kate is Ward’s daughter, and she volunteers in a refugee camp. Ward wants her to help as well. Kate knows a “coyote” who can smuggle the whole group inside. Kate’s friend Geeta has sneaked inside to scavenge, so Kate decides to go along to find her. With a couple of obvious red-shirt additions, they finally get under way at about fifty minutes into the film.
As they enter Las Vegas, they soon find out that undead humans aren’t the only problem. There’s Siegfried and Roy’s zombie tiger. The Coyote explains that not all of them are zombies- some of them are smart and organized. “She’s coming,” Coyote explains. They “trade” the rapist guard to the zombie queen for free passage through the city. If the original zombie bites someone, they become a leader smart zombie. If those zombies bite someone, they just become a dumb shambler. They take the rapist guard to the zombie king, who bites him.
They get attacked in a big ballroom full of the dead, and they lose Chambers first. They soon learn that they aren’t the first team to go in after the money. Tanaka’s sent others who failed. Meanwhile, Ward and Kate get some family bonding time. She’s not mad because he killed her mother; she’s mad because he wasn’t there for her. The safecracker finds the safe, and the pilot finds the helicopter. Martin and Coyote go outside to see how bad the situation is, and they manage to capture the queen. Martin takes her living head, and he plans to take it home with them to sell to the highest bidder.
They hear a news report that now the atomic bomb will be dropped at sunset tonight. The government has changed the timetable. The bomb drops in an hour and twenty minutes, and it’ll take thirty minutes to open the safe. Meanwhile, the zombie king rides in on a dead horse and hinds his beheaded queen. We learnt hat the queen was pregnant with an alien child. How and when did that happen? The king gets back on his horse and starts rallying his troops, including the tiger. We were told that the zombies are organized.
Kate leaves the group to go look for her friend Geeta, who ought to be dead by isn’t. Martin betrays everyone, which surprises no one. Coyote betrays Martin. The tiger has lunch. The king wears a bulletproof helmet, and he further cuts down the numbers of the living quickly.
Coyote holds off the king by holding a pistol to the queen’s still-living head, which she stole from Martin. Ward and the pilot fly away, leaving Coyote to face the king. They’ve got nine minutes to land at the Olympus, find Kate, and get out of town before the bomb goes off. No pressure.
Kate finds Geeta and has to fight the rapist guard, who is now a zombie leader. The king arrives, and it’s a free-for-all. Will Ward get to her in time? Hint: Las Vegas does not survive.
Commentary
The story has several very obvious similarities to the second “Train to Busan” film. A team has to go inside the zombie city to retrieve cash and things go awry. This one appears to have a much larger budget though. The intelligent zombie leaders add a lot of new interest to the stupid zombie creatures. The leader makeup, especially the queen, look really good.
It’s really, really long, and maybe a little slow. Or maybe epic is a better word, depending if you like it or not. It’s a slow burn with a couple of big explosions, but overall, I liked this quite a lot, and I’m surprised that I haven’t heard more about this film. Strap in, load up, and get ready for a long, epic zombie adventure that has some interesting new ideas.