This review, should you choose to read it, contains some spoilers.

Man, this is the most disappointing movie I’ve seen in a long time, because of the misleading title. Before you waste your money, please know that there are no ghosts in this movie at all. I hope that lady that tried to sue DRIVE for not being THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS will consider throwing some of her legal fund at this one too. It’s just shitty to take advantage of worldwide ghostamania like that. In all other aspects though I really enjoyed it.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE: GHOST PROTOCOL (subtitle said in Shaggy voice) is animation directionist Brad Bird’s first live action movie. I think he got pissed about George Miller, Zack Snyder and Wes Anderson directing cartoons so he was like “fuck you guys” and took one of their jobs. Or maybe it’s just that most directors of this genre these days are so lacking in the basic skills of filmatism that he was called in to tutor them. Whatever the motivation, I think his talents probly serve the world more uniquely doing cartoons, but luckily they also translate well to live action so his time away from his true calling isn’t a total waste.

I really dig that this series of movies has a new director for each installment, doing their own version of it. The directors so far always have a good pedigree, although of course John Woo blew it. But still. The idea of a big Hollywood based-on-a-TV-show franchise where DePalma set the template and other talented directors come in one time and then hit the road is a good one. It’s the ALIEN model, I guess. (DePalma directed prequel coming up?)

So this one can completely stand on its own, but for those keeping track it has more connection to the rest of the series than the others do. Part 3 director J.J. Abrams (don’t even fuckin think about it, AsimovLives) stayed on as producer for this one. It connects to what was going on with that one, using Ethan Hunt’s wife as a plot point, promoting Simon Pegg’s character Benji from cameo computer expert to co-starring field agent, and it doesn’t really try to reinvent the wheel. It’s only a somewhat tweaked wheel with more and clearer action and even more of an emphasis on the team. You got Cruise, Pegg, Paula The Super-hot Teacher Lady From PRECIOUS BASED ON THE NOVEL PUSH BY SAPPHIRE PUBLISHED BY KNOPF 1996 Patton, and THE HURT LOCKER’s Jeremy Renner as the secretary’s analyst that ends up on the run with the team and having some skills to earn his keep.

The teamwork is welcome because a big part of the old TV show was how cool it was to watch a team of experts work together to basically pull off a big prank in the name of national security or whatever. (they should add Steve-O to the team in the next one. I was gonna say Ashton Kutcher because he’s more of a pranker, but Steve-O would do his own stunts.) DePalma cleverly blew up the team in the first one, but that unfortunately set it up as The Tom Cruise Show, and this is the first time he keeps one team for the whole movie. Instead of the familiar plot of Cruise getting framed and disavowed it’s the whole IMF organization. Some asshole (Michael Nyqvist, male lead of the Swedish GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy) blew up the Kremlin and stole a nuclear warhead while our IMF friends were sneaking around in there too. Not cool. He’s gotta understand that when he does something like that he makes all Kremlin-infiltrators look bad, they all get lumped in together.

One thing you learn in this movie is that if you happen to be there when somebody is blowing up the Kremlin it would be best not to be found unconscious wearing a reversible Russian army jacket. Good travel tip there.

Then the secretary of defense or whatever (Tom Wilkinson) has to give them their mission and pretend to break ties with them, that is what Spooooky Protocol means. You’ve been decommissioned, I’m hear to take you into custody, while I am briefly distracted please take this train car full of crazy high tech shit and get the fuck out of here.

Before that, when Hunt gets his first mission that he can choose to accept, the message fails to self destruct as promised. He walks away, then looks back at it, has to go give it a whack like we used to do with TVs when they lost reception. Only then does it blow up. It’s a good joke and a bad omen about their missions in this movie: everything is always gonna go wrong. They can’t break into the computers the way they wanted to, the machines that make those cool masks get stuck, they accidentally kill somebody they need alive, they get hit by a sandstorm, the retinal scanner on the side of his secret train car requires him to hop up and down because he’s too short for it, the list goes on.

The rest of the team are so used to Hunt’s awesomeness that they think nothing of asking him to climb up the side of the world’s tallest building to break into a server just so they can slow down some elevators. His high tech spiderman type suction gloves stop working, so all he has is those rock climbing skills he showed in the opening of part 2. You know it’s a Brad Bird movie when the glove he tosses blows back to the building and has its own little character moment.

Just like the climbing gloves, all of the technology they use is incredible but fallible. One of the best scenes involves an elaborate illusion used to sneak past a security guard, but it can only look right from one angle. In the opening a network of micro-cameras, databases and facial recognition software identifies and warns an agent about an assassin, but the notification distracts him just as she pulls her gun out. So maybe he would’ve had a better chance without it.

I like the new team members. Patton has a great moment where shit is about to go down and she kicks off her pumps – it’s like a secretary coming home from a long day of work crossed with Billy Jack taking off his boots. Renner impressed me because he’s so good at playing ugly weirdos (DAHMER, THE TOWN) and here he’s transformed into a suave action hero. He wears nice suits and gets in fights, but does a little more self-deprecating humor than James Bond would. I love when Hunt pulls a gun on him just to prove he’ll know what to do about it. He does.

I don’t know what to say about Tom Cruise. He’s good in the way he’s usually good. I know you’re supposed to hate him now, ’cause he’s a weirdo, but I like him as this intensely focused superman. This time they let him look slightly ragged under the eyes and a little skinny when he’s shirtless. In his climbing gear he looks like a dorky bicyclist. But I don’t think you can say he’s a more relatable character. I don’t want him to be.

Wouldn’t it be funny if he bought the rights to do a sequel to V FOR VENDETTA, just to see if they’d stop wearing those masks to protest his church?

About a half hour of the movie was shot in Imax, so when you see it in real Imax (film projector, not digital) it pops out from letterboxed to full Imax screen for these gigantic establishing shots and incredible stunts on that building in Dubai. It reminded me of seeing LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in 70mm (and there’s even a musical homage to that movie during a desert shot).

It goes without saying that it’s refreshing to see a movie in this day and age that’s packed with action and never had me frustrated by disorienting closeups, shakiness or poor staging and editing (delete previous sentence, goes without saying). There’s alot going on but it flows. Even a deliberately confusing chase in a sandstorm comes off at least as coherent as the current Hollywood standard for non-sandstorm action in movies like SALT or WARRIOR. This is crucial because it’s not much of an exaggeration to call it non-stop action. They’re always hurtling ahead – even the handful of debriefing or pre-planning discussions tend to take place in moving vehicles on the way to some place they gotta sneak into. Without involving action and a good storytelling rhythm this could easily be one of those torturous movies of endless banging and yelling like THE MUMMY or the TRANSFORMERSes. But for me it was constantly entertaining and breezed by like a much shorter movie.

Bird is able to work the little character subplots in without slowing that constant forward movement. At the end there’s a “phew, let’s all take a few minutes to unwind and enjoy not being shot at” type of scene and I thought it was a nice way of doing it. Okay, we’ve blown the roof off, let’s use like 2 or 3 minutes to tie together some emotions and stuff.

My only real complaint is that after packing the movie with so many clever gimmicks and suspenseful sequences some of the stuff at the end seems a little weaker than what came before. Renner hovering through a fan via magnet power, for example, is played as a goofy sideplot. So it doesn’t have half the tension of Hunt trying not to fall off the building earlier or of course his cable work in the silent vault in part 1. And the showdown with Nyqvist in a revolving car garage seemed like it could’ve been the climax of a Pierce Brosnan Bond movie. It’s a small complaint though. That stuff is fine, but it’s the earlier stuff I keep thinking about.

I love the opening of the movie, where Hunt is being broken out of a Russian prison. To the horror of his team he decides to go off plan to sneak back through and rescue his informant (who has no idea he’s a secret agent, or that he’s not Russian). It’s a fun scene where he uses hand signals to Pegg to open specific security doors, carefully orchestrating the releasing of prisoners in order to create the right amount of rioting to facilitate his escape. It’s a great setpiece but after the movie was over I realized how significant it was to the character. If he’d stuck with the original plan and left that guy behind he wouldn’t have had access to crucial resources that ended up saving the day.

So is it karma, or is it brilliant strategy? He tells his team he couldn’t leave an informant behind to be killed, and tells the guy “I look after my friends.” But he might be just saying that to sound nice, it might really be that he’s always thinking 72 steps ahead. I’d like to say that it’s the first one and his selfless act ended up saving his ass later. But I’m not really sure.

Either way, they stopped a nuclear war. I’m for it. Keep doing that, guys.

* * *

BONUS SPOILER: In the opening there’s an IMF agent we haven’t seen before that gets Estevezed. It turns out you’re supposed to know he’s an actor from the TV program Lost. You may remember that TV’s Felicity played that same role in part 3. As long as J.J. Abrams is producing these things I think we know what’s gonna happen. Jennifer Garner will be an agent that dies in part 5 and the Cloverfield monster in part 6.

DOUBLE BONUS SPOILER: I kept waiting for the Lost guy to come back as a ghost, as part of the protocol, but it never happened. RIP OFF.

TRIPLE BONUS SPOILER QUESTION: Do you think it’s a reference to GOODFELLAS that she ended up in Seattle (well, Vancouver I think) at the end? That’s where witness protection put him in GOODFELLAS. I wonder if they know each other? Man, IMF could’ve taken out the mafia so much faster than the cops could’ve. That would be unconstitutional though I think.

It could also be called NUN TOO SOON or SECOND TO NUN or something like that. Or BAD HABIT.

Based on a book called Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan (they changed the title so nobody would be disappointed that Sean Connery didn’t have a cameo as the king at the end), “the town” of the title is Charlestown. Some text at the beginning tells us that this little neighborhood is the real life home to a ridiculous number of armed robbers, then some other text during the end credits tells us but really guys, there are many hard working non-criminals in Charlestown, how come you don’t go see a movie about them, huh? I was trying to remember which other movie it was that had to have a “hey, seriously though, let’s not generalize” disclaimer like that, and of course later I remembered it was MARKED FOR DEATH’s apology to Jamaicans.

The story is about this guy Doug and his four man armored car/bank robbing crew. There’s no time wasted fucking around like we haven’t seen the trailers. Right at the start they’re putting on scary Halloween masks and storming a bank. Jeremy Renner from THE HURT LOCKER is Jem, the oh-shit-he’s-going-too-far of the group – the Mr. Blonde, the Tupac in JUICE. So he kidnaps the bank manager (Rebecca Hall from VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA). We learn how unplanned this was the first time they meet up later and one of the guys asks “Are we taking hostages now?!” like a worker pissed off about a shitty new company policy.

They took the girl’s driver’s license, and they get freaked out later when they realize the address is like four blocks from where they live. Doug takes the assignment of staking her out to make sure everything’s cool, but he starts feeling sorry for her traumatized crying. I don’t know if everybody noticed this or not but there’s something in this scene I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. She’s doing laundry and sees a blood stain on her shirt, and obviously we know she’s thinking about the robbery. We see her face but her neck is also exposed to the camera, and if you look you can actually see goosebumps appear on her neck. Now that’s acting.

Anyway he feels bad about the goosebumps so he strikes up a conversation, next thing you know they’re dating. So it’s like one of those romantic comedies. At the end he’s probly gonna get told off, then have to win her back with a big speech about how yes, he just met her to make sure she couldn’t make him as the bank robber who terrorized her, but once he got to know her something happened that wasn’t part of the plan… he started to really love her. Then he’ll have to publicly serenade her and/or chase her to the airport.

I mean, this is not a documentary, there are trace elements of the Hollywood bullshit. He’s got a childhood backstory that he finds some resolution for at the same time as he’s getting out of the game, that’s pretty convenient. And this girl seems to really fall for him, I don’t think it’s supposed to just be Stockholm Syndrome, and I’m not sure I buy that. Also there’s a noble sacrifice that’s more thrilling-movie-drama than believable-turn-of-events. But none of this is too bad. It’s not Tony Scott or nothing. It feels very authentic for the most part.

I like that the FBI agent (John Hamm) doesn’t have some big mystery to solve. He figures out who the thieves are pretty easy and quick, but can’t prove it yet, and “we can’t get 24 hour surveillance unless one of these idiots converts to Islam.” He’s a good character because he’s good at what he does and he’s not some prick that you’re supposed to hate, like, say, the prosecutor in FIND ME GUILTY. But he’s got a little bit of doofus in him so it can be entertaining when he gets outmaneuvered, even though by all rights we oughta be rooting for him.

That’s the other thing. Doug is more a classic anti-hero than the noble thief the book title implies (unless that’s used ironically). I mean yeah, he’s more principled than Jem, and he does care about the girl, and he is trying to get out. But he’s not a good guy bank robber. He doesn’t have some good reason for what he does, and his tragic backstory doesn’t lead him to crime. And he’s not even charming like Clooney in OUT OF SIGHT or something. He’s a mean bastard. His version of doing the right thing is, like, a home invasion and severe beating of some assholes who harassed a girl he likes. And (SPOILER) he could easily come out of the movie without killing anybody, but he makes a conscious decision to execute a couple of guys. It’s very satisfying, especially since it has one of those “if I ever see you again, I’m gonna…” type of setups that are often used in movies without payoff. But I don’t think it’s something he absolutely had to do. He just does it to be safe.

He’s also very professional in the sense that he’s gonna hope not to hurt anybody, but not hesitate to spray at cops or security guards. And I don’t think he cares too much about his partner pushing a bank manager’s face in with a rifle butt.

Maybe the most damning is that he’s gonna leave town without a girl that Jem seems to think is his daughter. He gets pissed off and says she’s not his daughter, but the fact that Jem brings it up means something. I mean, does this girl think you’re her dad? And don’t you have some major hangups based on your mom leaving you? These kind of things come up without too much explanation or nudging to the audience. Good, understated shit.

This is not a slick movie, and the criminals aren’t glamorous. They’re ugly, they have shitty tattoos, their girlfriends wear too much makeup and hoop earrings and need to get off the fucking oxycontin. And it’s not shown during the movie but I’m pretty sure they’re all really into House of Pain. And possibly THE BOONDOCK SAINTS. Probly not part 2, but I’m pretty sure they own part 1. They also show no signs at all of spending all this money they steal. You almost wonder if this is really better than working at the rock quarry.

The movie is directed by Affleck, and he did a good job. Good gritty atmosphere, tense and pretty clear explosions of violence, good acting performances, good pacing, real kick-in-the-teeth serious tone with a little bit of humor to make it go down better. But you know, I heard he did a good job on GONE BABY GONE, so that wasn’t that surprising that he could direct. What did get me is how credible Affleck is in the movie as a badass. I honestly got nothing against him, he seems like a real likable and funny guy, he’d make a good politician if he didn’t have videos of drunkenly hitting on entertainment reporters. But I think about him in that ridiculous movie DAREDEVIL, or even SMOKIN’ ACES where I was so happy when his dipshit character got killed… I’m just amazed at how good he is here. Yeah, he obviously bulked up his shoulders, and he learned a gravelly voice and kept his dialogue pretty spare. But I think the real secret was mastering this facial expression:

Holy shit, I think he’s starting to look like Scott Adkins, too:

Maybe it’s the subconscious fear of kicking that makes him such a good protagonist. But I don’t think so. I think it’s that he’s a very capable character. He knows how to handle shit and he gets right to it without saying much. When the girl, not knowing he’s one of the thieves, asks him if she should tell the FBI a piece of information that she didn’t mention before, his advice is ultimately self-serving but it also clearly comes from a vast reserve of knowledge about how to outsmart cops. When he decides he needs to fuck somebody up, he doesn’t hesitate, and the movie doesn’t either. They just jump right to it.

This is a real good one. It’s got enough emotion in there that it seems like he’s reaching for something other than just a generic Hollywood thriller, but it’s got more than enough of the goods to know that it’s not an Oscar he’s reaching for. This is a real crime movie.

I got a theory, his partner Matt Damon left him behind to go star in some Clint Eastwood movies, so Affleck is thinking “how am I gonna get him back?” and he decides well shit, I’ll try my damndest to be Clint Eastwood. He directs himself in this tough guy role, and he’s probly taking piano lessons.

Damn, Daredevil, you’re a real filmatist. I’m impressed. What was that Robin Williams thing he got the Oscar for? Am I gonna have to watch that shit?

This is the story of a 3-man bomb disposal unit. They get a new team leader at the beginning, and he’s played by Jeremy Renner. I don’t know if his team recognizes him from DAHMER like I did, but shit man, look out. From the beginning he seems a little unstable and alot reckless, and they gotta worry if this will prevent them from getting safely to the end of that countdown.

But a plot description like that doesn’t do justice to this character at all. He’s not a psycho. He’s not gonna snap like Colonel Kurtz or start talking to fake looking severed heads like Bokeem Woodbine in DEAD PRESIDENTS. He’s addicted to risk and has some kind of a non-vigilante death wish, but he’s human, he’s 3-dimensional, he’s a good guy. The worst things he does are kind of the most sane, the ones he does out of an anger and hurt about what somebody did to somebody he cared about. And this guy is charismatic too. Not like Jim Jones charismatic, more like Martin Riggs. He’s funny, he’s cool, he makes you feel better when he calls you “buddy.”

And I mention Riggs on purpose because I also saw this as a little bit of a deconstruction of the crazy over the edge heroes of action movies. In movies like LETHAL WEAPON he does something insane and suicidal, and you laugh at the other characters getting freaked out by it. In this movie you agree with those other people. This guy is gonna get them all killed.

Renner is perfect in the role, spectacular without being showy. I think he’ll get an Oscar nomination and a bunch of big roles that hopefully don’t waste his talent too much. In fact I’m gonna go ahead and predict that they’ll give him one of the big comic book roles. We can have Chopper as Hulk, Patrick Bateman as Batman and Jeffrey Dahmer as Captain America.

The rest of the cast (including that guy who played Tupac in NOTORIOUS) are also perfect, but the biggest star besides Renner is director Kathryn Bigelow. You know and love her as the director of NEAR DARK, BLUE STEEL and POINT BREAK. She never was hugely prolific and had been MIA from the big screen since ‘02, but now all the sudden she’s back and showing today’s male action directors for the little girls they are. She takes that stupid modern shakycam style and applies it with discipline. Admittedly I got a little woozy here and there from unsteady cameras, but I always knew exactly what I needed to know. Any chaos is deliberate, otherwise you know the geography, the stakes, the goal.

An example of how masterfully this thing is put together is the opening bomb disposal sequence. On the surface it’s a terrific suspense sequence and a great guest appearance for Guy Pearce. But also it sets up the whole movie. It establishes the correct procedure for the bomb disposal (so we can compare to later when it’s done incorrectly). It establishes what can go wrong even under the most careful circumstances (so we know what to fear). It also sets up the realistic style of the movie, the casual professionalism of the characters and their sense of gallows humor. That’s another thing Bigelow shows the fellas up for – she keeps a consistent grim tone and still comes up with more laughs than directors who shall remain nameless who can’t stop themselves from interrupting every supposedly tense scene with twenty five lame improvised quips and sight gags.

I don’t consider this a pro or anti war movie, but some people might read it different ways because you can bring your own ideas to it. In the book Jarhead Anthony Swofford wrote that there’s no such thing as an anti-war movie because the soldiers will whoop and holler even if it’s CASUALTIES OF WAR or something. Early on I think THE HURT LOCKER could make war seem glamorous to some people. Their job isn’t about shooting people, it’s about saving lives and limbs by dismantling these roadside bombs. And they have a sort of arrogant pose in the face of death because they’re so good at what they do. They’re cool. But it would be hard to watch it without seeing the conflict they’re stuck in as senseless and fruitless. It’s like they’re stuck in purgatory. They’re there because people are making bombs and people are making bombs because they’re there and all they can do is wait for their time to leave and then somebody else will do it and nothing will change. In their line of work there’s not progress, there’s not a goal to work toward. Just keep dismantling bombs until you blow up or go home. It’s like some ’80s arcade game.

So it carves this precise picture of a surreal zone of hopelessness where these poor bastards are stuck facing these intense situations every day. The movie makes it easy to see through their eyes, seeing that everyone watches them and everyone is a potential threat. They’re trying to take apart these explosives while heads poke out of windows and towers all around and any one of them could have a cell phone that could detonate the bomb. And it’s hard for them to communicate with these people, and the movie usually leaves us with the soldiers, having our suspicions about who’s out to get them but not really knowing for sure. These characters aren’t real abusive towards civilians or anything but they treat them coldly in ways that I obviously don’t agree with, but I can see why they do it. They don’t want to blow up.

The screenplay is by Mark Boal, who knows his shit because he was embedded with a bomb squad. He might’ve also been embedded with a screenwriting class because he knows how to write a hell of a movie. He avoids the standard war movie formulas in favor of an episodic survival kind of structure. Almost all of the war movie cliches are avoided. He might’ve started some new ones though, because the detailed looks at bomb disposing robots and protective suits are interesting material that other directors will want to start including in their movies.

I always liked Kathryn Bigelow, but in many ways this is better than anything she’s done before. It’s great to see someone you were ready to give up on suddenly come back harder than ever.

[ratings]

But I gotta tread carefully here because there are people out there who will flip out if you use the word “zombie” to describe the zombie-like people doing zombie things in this movie that is clearly based on the zombie films of George Romero. Zombies, it turns out, are people who die and then come back to life as zombies. They are not people who are infected and become zombies, unless they are infected to the point of death and then become zombies. In the case of these movies they just get infected, they do not necessarily die as far as we know, so they are something else. Nobody knows what it’s called, but it’s not a zombie. It’s just some thing that is exactly like a zombie and has every quality associated with zombies, but you can’t call it a zombie, that’s like using the N word almost. So I apologize to all the things who are not zombies but are exactly like zombies in all respects but they have not died and therefore are not zombies that I offended in my previous blurb. I will be more sensitive this time.

(By the way, you zealots on this issue better go after the supposedly fact-based book and movie SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, since they argue that real life Haitian zombies are people who have been given a poison that slows down their heart rate to make them appear dead, then they come back as zombies. They have not technically died and yet they are using the word zombie, you better make some signs and get down there.)

Anyway, 28 WEEKS LATER is the sequel which is done by a different director but overseen by Boyle as a producer (and even second unit director). In this one we see the longer term results of the not-zombie diaster in London and also learn that significant events in the spread of the virus happen to always come in increments of 28 time units.

The movie opens back around the 28 days mark with a group of survivors holed up in a farm house, reminiscent of both NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and some kind of hippie commune. Before long of course the house is attacked by infected non-zombie-yet-extremely-zombie-like individuals and the camera starts shaking and everybody screams and gets dizzy.

I’m no advocate of the shakycam, but I understand the stylistic reason for it in this case. These movies are meant to have a documentary-like look that theoretically would give the viewer more of a feeling of reality than in a real zombie movie done carefully and artistically on film. In theory it’s a good idea but in practice I don’t think the “it’s like COPS but you’re running from zombies” gimmick hits me in the gut like the existential dread of the characters hopelessly surrounded by unstoppable hordes of lumbering former humans in Romero’s world. Call me old fashioned.

Still, like any potentially dangerous technology, the shakycam can be put to good use or bad. 28 WEEKS LATER demonstrates both. Later on there are scenes where I had to wait 2 or 3 minutes to find out who exactly it was that got killed earlier when the camera was doing the watusi in a dark tunnel, but this opening escape from the farm house gets my seal of approval. Either they planned it well or they got real damn lucky, because they are able to have the panic and chaos of the handheld camera but also visually communicate what is going on, clearly showing Robert Carlyle hauling ass across a field and lines of, uh, angries forming on all sides.

It’s an intense scene that kicks the movie off with a bang, but not just because of the action. Here is a guy in a life or death situation who chooses selfishness over heroism. But he’s not the bad guy, he appears to be the protagonist. So instead of being 100% evil or Ellis-like it seems more like a profoundly weak and human moment. Here is Robert Carlyle, a likable guy, fairly handsome, capable of escaping the attack, should be a good movie hero – but he abandons his wife. He knows he should go back for her, but that he has a much better chance to escape if he doesn’t, so he doesn’t.

Then we skip to the 28 weeks later. London has been quarantined, the people who are like zombies have died off, the US Army has created a Green Zone type headquarters where the surviving refugees are being flown back in. Here Carlyle is reunited with his son and daughter. He’s some kind of medical bigshot, they stay in a hotel, they are happy to be together. You feel good for him but then they talk about their mother and he lies to them, claiming he saw her turn. Okay dude, we accepted that you were a coward but now you’re lying to your own children. You’re pushin it, buddy.

This is one of the things that made the movie interesting to me – he’s just such a flawed and complicated character. I think he really does love his family but he just can’t get past the fact that he’s a god damn coward. Whenever there’s a big disaster that happens you hear all kinds of stories of brave and selfless acts, feats of heroism. But what makes these stories news is that they are unusual. People are usually afraid to do that kind of shit. Carlyle is playing one of those normal guys who did not find it in him to become a hero, to do what he obviously should do. He was defeated by his fear.

And then things get more complicated for the family when the kids sneak out of the Green Zone, wander through the abandoned city to their house, and find their mother, still alive. Whoops. Dad had no way of knowing that she had a rare genetic trait that allowed her to be a carrier of the virus while being immune to its symptoms. So his story didn’t really check out.

From there of course the virus makes a comeback, the shit makes contact with the fan, and various zombie-like mayhem goes down. There’s alot of damn running in this world, it made me think I oughta get in better shape, just in case. There’s also a scene where a bunch of infecties get chopped up by a helicopter blade, which is kind of funny because 1. this also happened to the infected not-zombies in PLANET TERROR and 2. a helicopter blade chopped up a zombie in DAWN OF THE DEAD, and other elements of that scene were already lifted in 28 DAYS LATER. So the zombie vs. helicopter motif lives on. Now let’s bring back the zombie vs. shark from Fulci’s ZOMBI 2.

The movie stays intense and interesting throughout, and I think I liked it better than the first one. There are eerie scenes where our heroes run through the abandoned London streets chased not by the infected but by soldiers who should be protecting them. One minute you think they’re alone, the next an ominous cloud of gas floats from around the corner, and you know the faceless, masked soldiers are somewhere behind it. Man, that took me back to 1999 and the WTO protests, I never had a horror movie do that to me before.

That’s actually one thing I like better about this one and the thing that makes it more worthy of being compared to Romero. I had to check to see if the first one came before or after 9-11, because at least for me personally it didn’t do much to tap into the particular paranoia of the moment. (It came after, released here in the summer of 2003). This one, though, has all kinds of echoes of recent turmoil and in particular of the war in Iraq. The early scenes of American soldiers on lookout duty passing time by spying on the hotel residents through their rifle scopes says everything. These are good guys, they are there to help, but they are in a bad situation and they end up disrespecting and dehumanizing these people to the point that they don’t even think about it when they aim deadly weapons at them. It’s creepy because it’s true.

To me this was the most interesting stuff in the movie, the flawed character of the people and the operation they put in place. So as the movie goes along and by definition has to get more involved in the mechanics of people running in terror trying not to get bit it did lose a little bit of steam for me. Still, an intelligent and worthy sequel. I will definitely watch 28 FORTNIGHTS LATER or 28 FRIDAYS LATER (starring Ice Cube) or whatever they come up with for the next one.

[ratings]