Tag Archives: Matthias Schweighöfer

Movie Review ~ Army of Thieves

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The Facts:

Synopsis: A mysterious woman recruits bank teller Ludwig Dieter to lead a group of aspiring thieves on a top-secret heist during the early stages of the zombie apocalypse.

Stars: Matthias Schweighöfer, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, Guz Khan, Jonathan Cohen, Noémie Nakai

Director: Matthias Schweighöfer

Rated: NR

Running Length: 127 minutes

TMMM Score: (7/10)

Review:  Stop right there, dear reader.  We cannot proceed any further into this review of the new Netflix film Army of Thieves, a prequel/spinoff to director Zack Snyder’s May release Army of the Dead without entering the danger zone of spoiler territory.  Only go forth if you don’t mind knowing some small details about the earlier film which factor into this, even though seeing Army of the Dead isn’t a requirement to enjoy this slippery little nugget of a heist film.  You sure you’re ready?  For real and true?  Ok…here we go.

I, for one, was super surprised to see this movie come through the pipeline for production so soon after the release of the well-received original film that it has spun-off from.  True, the pandemic did delay the release of Army of the Dead (AOD from now on) so it was in the can for a time before it began streaming but from the sound of it Snyder and his team had the percolations of expanding their original idea into something larger while working on that first film.  It’s also true that AOD was itself its own semi adjacent spinoff from Snyder’s 2004 reimaging/remake of George A. Romero 1978 zombie classic Dawn of the Dead, so Army of Thieves (AOT) is just widening that world-build further.  It’s still in its infancy but if AOT is any indication of what’s to come, Snyder’s zombieverse might just have found a fun little niche in a genre that had been growing low on energy for some time.

So now we get to the obvious.  AOT is all about Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer) the charismatic safecracker that was one of the crew brought in by Dave Bautista’s character in AOD to help break into an impenetrable safe and haul out mounds of cash.  As far as we know, Dieter gave his life for the cause (hey, it’s the movies…anything can happen unless we see a body decomposing, right?) so watching AOT to begin with is a bit of a strange beast.  We know how the story is going to end for Dieter so why invest an additional two hours into an origin story that links up with a movie we’ve already seen?  It’s not like a Marvel film where we go back and see how Spider Man got his senses or Thor got his hammer.  In fact, with the zombie apocalypse beginning to swell in the background in the latter half of this film, knowing that quite a lot of these characters will be goners almost balances some of the joy/excitement created (and it does!) with some melancholy.

I wouldn’t have exactly called Dieter a breakout character from AOD, but I would say that Schweighöfer made a memorable impression, something that I was reminded of as AOT starts featuring the actor as Dieter laying out the history of famous safe maker and his four masterworks.  Creatively inspired by Wagner’s The Ring Cycle, these were notoriously impossible mini-fortresses to break into and the designer himself used one as his tomb.  We already know that the last and most impressive features heavily into AOD, so AOT focuses on Dieter’s recruitment by international criminal Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel, F9: The Fast Saga) to rob the other three scattered throughout Europe.  With help from muscle Brad Cage (Stuart Martin), getaway driver Rolph (Guz Khan) and tech expert Korina (Ruby O. Fee), this merry band of thieves must learn to trust one another and avoid capture by determined officer Delacroix (Jonathan Cohen). 

It was refreshing to see this spinoff to a film that was packed to the skulls with zombies be relatively walking dead-less and instead take on the qualities of a heist film in the vein of Oceans 11 or The Italian Job.   It’s a little more by-the-numbers than either of those films and misses some of the clever spark which gave the productions a leg up but it’s definitely not lacking in good will or energy to please.  Schweighöfer pulls double duty playing the lead and directing the film, demonstrating easy balance of those two pivotal roles without letting either slide.  I could have done with some trimming of several sequences where Dieter is attempting to open a safe and we see the inner workings of the mechanism, the gears moving and tumblers falling into place.  Once is interesting to establish but after minutes have gone by it just looks like a Windows 98 screensaver. 

If AOT winds up feeling conventional in structure (it’s a bank heist movie, don’t ask it to be something more) the viewer can appreciate that it was carried off with some style.  Hans Zimmer and Steve Mazzaro’s score adds a nice zip and Bernhard Jasper’s cinematography is commendable for giving us the coverage we need to understand what’s going on while stoking our desire for international travel.  There’s a new film set after AOD, Planet of the Dead, that has been announced and Schweighöfer is in the cast so perhaps this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Dieter and that’s OK by me.  There’s enough interest created in Snyder’s first expansion of his zombieverse to make me want to see more.

 

Movie Review ~ Army of the Dead

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The Facts:

Synopsis: Following a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, a group of mercenaries take the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantine zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.

Stars: Dave Bautista, Ella Purnell, Ana de la Reguera, Omari Hardwick, Matthias Schweighöfer, Raúl Castillo, Samantha Win, Nora Arnezeder, Tig Notaro, Richard Centrone, Athena Perample, Theo Rossi, Huma S. Qureshi, Hiroyuki Sanada, Garret Dillahunt

Director: Zack Snyder

Rated: R

Running Length: 148 minutes

TMMM Score: (8/10)

Review:  Movie trends go up and down with the tide and I’m a little surprised that the love for zombies in film and television has gone on for as long as it has.  It’s far past its expiration date in my book, getting to the point where I have to resist entirely skipping over a title if I see the ‘z’ word or ‘undead’ anywhere in a plot description.  There just has to be more life, or the afterlife, than munching on brains and finding new ways for those running in terror to be ripped apart or, if fighting back, stop their foe with a sharp object to the head.  After some respectable “of the Dead” sequels churned out by original Night of the Living Dead creator George A. Romero before his passing in 2017, a new generation of films were created to further that legacy and it became difficult to discern what had Romero’s blessing and which were but cheap imitators in name only.

If we were still embracing the term “winning” (and I’m here to tell you, we are not), one could easily say that director Zack Snyder is the de facto champion filmmaker of 2021 so far.  Not only did his long overdue and much anticipated director’s cut of the greatly maligned Justice League debut on HBOMax to spectacular reviews, but he’s following it up two months later with a gonzo zombie film that is the itch you never knew you needed to scratch.  Now, while Snyder has a significant and loyal fanbase that always has his back (for better or for worse), who can say if Army of the Dead would have gotten as much of a buzzed about release if Justice League hadn’t been received so well.  While not related to Romero’s work, I’d imagine that horror icon finding a lot to like about Snyder’s film, which takes it’s time (148 minutes to be exact) to lay out a detailed plot featuring characters that have depth…and it’s not just the living ones.

That’s not to say I was totally in the Snyder camp right away.  An enticing prologue featuring soldiers transporting a mysterious government asset that crashes in the Nevada desert led into a credit sequence that is basically an entire prequel film in and of itself.  What the government was protecting is a quick moving and strong alpha undead that makes quick work of the soldiers, turning them into his hungry minions.  Descending upon Vegas, they soon proliferate a zombie infestation that we see brave men and women trying to control the spread.  By the time we see Snyder’s ‘Directed by’ credit, a wall has been fashioned around Vegas keeping the plague contained…but for how long?

While Snyder has the right idea in his introduction and stages it with typically excellent skill, it’s the credits that feel like he handed duties over to an assistant that didn’t quite have his style down.  Gaudy, gory, and meant to be funny but not getting halfway there, it’s enough to make you think twice about sticking with the movie for the next two and a half hours.  Stick with it.  It’s but a mere bump in the road because once Army of the Dead really gets moving, it becomes a thrill a minute blast following a ragtag group gathered by Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada, Mortal Kombat) to take back millions of dollars in cash just sitting in his zombie inhabited casino. 

Led by Scott Ward (Dave Bautista, My Spy), the group includes mercenary turned mechanic Maria Cruz (Ana de la Reguera, Nacho Libre), brawny Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick, Spell) who carries around a buzzsaw as his weapon of choice, expert safecracker Dieter (Matthias Schweighöfer), and helicopter pilot Marianne Peters (Tig Notaro, Together Together) who is responsible for getting a chopper on top of the hotel working in time to get the crew out of Vegas before a nuclear bomb decimates the undead once and for all.  Guiding them will be Tanaka’s security agent Martin (Garret Dillahunt, Looper) and Lilly (Nora Arnezeder) who routinely smuggles people through the wall and into casinos so they can steal the remaining money in the slot machines.  To up the personal stakes, Scott’s daughter Kate (Ella Purnell, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children) is a last-minute addition to the squad, hoping to find a friend that Lilly brought in and hasn’t returned.

If I told you that all of this happens within the first hour and you had 90 minutes to go, would you still be on board?  Hope so because the next hour and a half takes you over the wall and into a decrepit Vegas that has been overrun by zombies.  Adapting to their environment, the stronger have survived and formed a kind of community while others just wait around for the next scrap of unlucky flesh to pass by their vicinity…and then they pounce.  Experienced in the ways of negotiating passage through without becoming lunch, Lilly helps the team into the city and for a while things are going fine…until suspicion amongst the group gets the better of them.  As factions break off and they separate, Snyder easily juggles several action-packed storylines at once and doesn’t short shrift any of his actors getting their moment to shine.  Thankfully, that also means we don’t stick around too long with some of the characters that could grate on us, like Dillahunt’s Martin who is little more than your stock shady inside man sent in to protect his boss’s investment. 

What keeps the film so engaging is it’s unpredictability, you just never know who is going to make it to the end credits and who might be a tasty snack in the first scene.  No one is safe and while Snyder and co-screenwriters Shay Hatten and Joby Harold give the characters an appropriate amount of time to mourn, at the same time they aren’t above taking out a team member you would have bet the house had a long life ahead of them.  Going hand in hand with keeping you on your toes is that there are times when Army of the Dead is genuinely frightening. Let’s not forget while zombies are often shown as lumbering slow movers they can also be sprinting fiends out for flesh.  The leader of the legion of undead and his wicked mate have exceptional make-up effects and costume designs – perfect nightmare fodder.

It might be easy to debate the film is overlong and while a trim here and there might have gotten Army of the Dead down to a slightly shorter sit, as presented it doesn’t feel like an excess of overindulgence.  It’s simply a big movie with a big goal and when you go to Vegas, you gamble it all if you want to win.  I think Snyder and company are successful in what they set out to achieve (confirming Bautista is a bona-fide action star, if anything) and you can count on Army of the Dead to play well on any size screen you choose to view it on.