WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Army of the Dead, now in theaters and streaming on Netflix.
Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead makes no qualms about what it is, a bombastic zombie shoot em' up that doubles as a layered heist film. However, as the story progresses, it shares a message about the dangers of greed and how it rarely brings out the best in people. In conveying this message, the film also continues a legacy established decades ago with the father of the zombie film, George A. Romero.
For decades, Romero's Dead films have often commented on the state of society at the time of each film's release. The most prevalent has been the 1978 film Dawn of the Dead. The movie is about survivors trapped in a mall during a zombie outbreak and how it parallels the dangers of consumerism. Army of the Dead borrows this strategy, right down to its location. But rather than a mall to represent its message, Snyder goes big by using Las Vegas as a backdrop to study the dangers that come from greed and vanity.
The hints of greed are born from the orchestrator of the entire heist, Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada). Appealing to the avarice that lies within everyone, he lures his team to steal $200 million from a vault in the undead-infested city. But his real goal is to capture a sample off of one of the zombies to sell to the government. With the world power's desire to command their own zombie army, Tanaka gets a hefty cut to add to his already massive wealth. The man in charge of the field operation, Scott Ward (Dave Bautista), becomes an unsuspecting pawn as he uses other's desire for money to build his team.
The only one in it for the vanity is Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), a safecracker who dreams of opening the impossibly difficult safe below Vegas. But once he does, he also opens Pandora's Box as hordes of zombies swarm their location, with Dieter dying in the process. That same greed claims the lives of everyone who enters Vegas, except for Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick), who stays behind for the money and pays the ultimate price for his greed as a survivor harboring a bite from the zombie leader, Zeus.
Army of the Dead makes a point to show how one's greed can also, albeit rarely, bring out the best in a person. For Scott, he wanted the money to build a better life for himself and his daughter and give a home for the refugees she aids. But since he entered Vegas for money, he shared the same grim fate as the rest. Except Scott was able to rebuild his relationship with his daughter Kate (Ella Purnell) and atone for his own mistakes. At the end of the film, Kate becomes the one true survivor and is also the only one who doesn't join the team for money. Instead, she joins Scott to try and help a woman who was trapped somewhere in the city.
Because Kate's decision to join the heist was out of a selfless choice, she escapes with her life but not without the loss she endures while in Vegas. The film is subtle in its message but, like Romero, uses zombies as a vessel to tell a story with a topic that speaks to reality. Army of the Dead shows how greed and vanity can often corrupt and bring out the worst in a person, making them forget that looking out for one another no matter what is what's most important.
Directed and co-written by Zack Snyder, Army of the Dead stars Dave Bautista, Garret Dillahunt, Ella Purnell, Omari Hardwick, Raul Castillo, Tig Notaro, Theo Rossi, Matthias Schweighöfer and Ana de la Reguera. The film is now streaming on Netflix.
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