Review: Zombie heist thriller Army of the Dead is Zack Snyder at his best

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  Patient Zero: Zeus, the Alpha zombie king (Richard Cetrone), surveys his future kingdom: Las Vegas. [credit: Netflix ]

A team of mercenaries ventures into zombie-infested Las Vegas in hopes of recovering millions in cash from a casino vault in Zack Snyder's zombie heist horror thriller, Army of the Dead. It's a stylish mix of Zombieland (especially the opening montage) and Ocean's Eleven, with a smattering of The Dirty Dozen. While Snyder's distinctive directorial style is plainly evident, he has reined in his worst impulses to give us a clever, entertaining twist on the zombie apocalypse, featuring all the flesh-eating carnage one expects from the genre.

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

As I wrote previously, in a sense, Snyder has come full circle. His directorial debut was 2008's Dawn of the Dead, an entertaining reboot of the original George Romero classic from 1978. Army of the Dead started out as a joint project between Universal Studios and Warner Bros. back in 2007. But like so many films, it got stuck in development hell until Snyder signed on as director in 2019. Netflix picked up the distribution rights from Warner Bros. soon after.

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