BStalker

Words cannot describe how cool this film is. Imagine blending John Woo, Yuen Woo Ping, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson into one uber-director and you have Ryuhei Kitamura. Great cinematography, great editing, great sound, cool and quirky storyline, suitably over-the-top acting, gross effects...just absolutely fantastic.

Watch it sober and it's great. Watch it drunk and it's a revelation.

Clearly many viewers disliked this movie. Passionately. Chances are the same people hated Armageddon. Passionately. Michael Bay has a distinctive style which produces powerful reactions - either you go with it and enjoy the rollercoaster ride, or it doesn't work for you and his style comes across as shallow and painfully cheesy. IF you let yourself dumb down and take in the visuals instead of expecting a war movie in a similar vein to all the other recent attempts, you should find huge enjoyment in the film. Indeed, it was the second highest grossing film of 2001 behind Shrek which suggests it can't have been hated by everyone.

Personally, I think expectations were too high with people looking for another Titanic/Saving Private Ryan. The first hour is admittedly a little slow, but this is the price for the BEST 45 mins of action ever put to screen. This is the only film I've ever seen where the CGI is almost always indistinguishable from the real stuff. Somehow Lord of the Rings won the Visual Effects oscar instead, despite having some fairly poor effects at times. The hour of light-weight romantic build up gives the battle scene greater power by having such a strong contrast between the frivolous love story and such a momentous historical tragedy - especially in the recent Director's Cut which restores all the battle violence that was originally trimmed for the necessary PG-13 Theatrical rating.

The last part of the film was heavily criticised for it's apparent ridiculousness and what looks like a heavily contrived upbeat conclusion. However, the Doolittle raid is portrayed fairly accurately (most of Alec Baldwin's dialogue is a word-for-word copy of Doolittle's actual speeches). As far as the nastier details of the campaign are concerned (e.g. Japanese treatment of captured pilots), financial pressure from the Japanese market forced some omissions. As far as the somewhat contrived love story is concerned - blame Disney. They only agreed to put up the huge budget on the condition that a love story was included.

Basically, if you go with the cheese, the film is immensely powerful and entertaining. If you are just too cynical, or unable to enjoy "dumber" films, then there is little chance of making it through the entire film without vomiting.

Bay's style, like Tony Scott or John Woo, is highly distinctive and quite probably an indication of the style that will become more popular over the next few years as audience intelligence and attention spans continue to decrease. Perhaps then, Pearl Harbor will be more appreciated. Currently it is simply too uncomfortable a mix of Bruckheimer dumb action/romance and serious war film for most people. Those of you who haven't seen it, try the Director's Cut - you might like it.

It was Alan Partridge who so wisely pointed out "Zombies are by their very nature inconsistent" and Zombi 3 seems to have this pearl of wisdom at its heart. All the ingredients are present for a perfect Italian zombie film - dire script, bad acting, bad dubbing but terrific amounts of gore. Many may cite Zombie Flesh Eaters as the better film, and even one of Fulci's best, but this follow-up has many less moments of tedium. To have Bruno Mattei take over direction was an inspired choice given his fantastically amusing direction on the older 'Night of the Zombies' AKA 'Zombie Creeping Flesh'. Sometimes we see the traditional Romero-style zombies who plod along slowly in a rather un-threatening, retarded sort of way, then at other moments we see the living dead running, wrestling, and incompetently wielding machetes. In the latter stages of the film they miraculously develop the ability to talk culminating in the frankly bizarre situation of having a zombie DJ spewing out zombie wisdom on his zombie radio station. Could this be an attempt at social comment? Probably not.

What is so admirable about this farcical logic is the fact that the director just doesn't care - he just gives them whatever characteristics suit that particular scene. Ironically this lends strength to some of the scenes since there is very little chance that an audience expects a severed head to fly out of a fridge and start munching on a man's neck. Likewise, who could have guessed that some dry ice bubbling up in a river could result in a woman losing her legs? How many other films dare to have a flock of zombie birds attack a coach load of girls? And who could not be repulsed by seeing a zombie fetus attack a woman while bursting out of the womb? Such endlessly strange and surprising scenes keeps the audience guessing as to what peculiar event might happen next. 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' is limited to a few key moments such as the eye-gouging and the zombie vs shark scene, 'Zombie Holocaust' had its outboard motor vs zombie head, 'Night of the Zombies' had the twin-thumb-eye-gouge and 'City of the Living Dead' had the gut-vomit and head-drill but Zombi 3 has enough strange and memorable moments to beat them all.

Out of all the Italian zombie films, this one seems to have the most sense of its own stupidity and instead of trying to give it a sense of plausibility, the makers just go with it and have a lot of fun. I doubt anyone will find the film scary, but for pure consistently absurd entertainment, this one's at the top of the genre. The script is terrible, the acting awful, the music dreadful and the film sucks on most levels. Absolute genius.

(The film is released in the UK in March 2002 under the title 'Zombie Flesh Eaters 2' and is uncut.)