SHAUN OF
THE DEAD
by Kristen Ashley

Life couldn't get worse. You're at that time of life when you have to decide: are you going to be a grown up, or be a lad for the rest of your life? Are you going to take some responsibility and enjoy life, love and the fruits of your labors at the electronics store...or play video games, live in semi-squalor and go to the pub every night?

The decision is tough - the competition is fierce between girlfriend, her neurotic friends, and your successful flatmate against your other flatmate, the childhood friend who has no job, farts a lot and does a mean impersonation of an orangutan.

Hmmm...tough. Of course you choose childhood friend...uh, duh!

You don't mean to, of course, you want it all...but girlfriend only has so much energy to try to change every nuance of the essence of you, and she's run out of that energy. It's time for you to go. Breaking up is hard to do...nothing could be worse. Except if you wake up the day after the breakup with a mean hangover and most of the population of England has turned undead.

You thought dealing with your girlfriend's expectations was tough; you thought that the 17-year-old at the electronics store who was just that little bit cleverer than you was tough; and it doesn't make it any better that your stepdad keeps hounding you about how you treat your Mum. Well, try getting the zombie in your backyard to quit stalking you, with only a hamper full of kitchen paraphernalia and a few records (not all of which you allow yourself to use) at your disposal.

Shaun of the Dead, starring Simon Pegg, directed by Edgar Wright, and written by both, written by Pegg and Edgar Wright and directed by Wright, once again brings the zombie horror flick to the masses. Following in the footsteps of the legendary Sam Raimi (okay, maybe he's only legendary to me, Pegg and Wright take Jimmy Stewart (slightly more lowbrow and ginger-haired), put him in London, and instead of a corrupt Congress or even more corrupt Mr. Potter to conquer, throw a few hundred zombies at him while he's trying to win the girl, ignore the annoying friends, come to terms with his future and convince his Mum that her husband isn't exactly right.

Hilariously funny and often poignant, the film (rest assured, die-hard horror fans) has no dearth of blood, guts, gore and special little frights. Pegg and Wright are clearly lovers of the genre, and tip their hats to it even as they make fun of it. Pegg is absolutely brilliant as Shaun and manages not only to hold his own but to outshine Nick Frost, who could easily have stolen the show as Ed, the ne'er-do-well childhood friend. The movie is chock full of cameos, from news presenters to England's hippest of the hip comic actors (so hip I was disappointed that the cameos were genuine, most especially that The Office's Martin Freeman and Little Britain's Matt Lucas had only one word of dialogue - still, they were beautifully placed). There is excellent (and hilarious) supporting work by Bill Nighy, Lucy Davis and Penelope Wilton.

The writing is superb, giving us enough time to build our relationships with the characters before we start to worry which one will start shuffling and moaning first. Lovely bits of editing and camera work heighten the tension while taking the piss at the same time. The film's intention is to give you a sense of an amateur's homage, and succeeds so beautifully you don't realize you are being lulled, quite deftly, into a genuine horror flick. In short, it's a giggle and a jump and a delicious time at the movies. I haven't seen a better movie all year.

What an incredible disappointment to go from the high that was Shaun of the Dead almost immediately to the pit of hell that was Paul McGuigan's Gangster No. 1. Frankly, I think I'd rather know the story of Gangster No. 27, because No. 1 was boring.

Malcolm McDowell and Paul Bettany play the gangster at different ages of his life. Bettany, for some reason, is the only actor who gets replaced by another actor (who just happens to look nothing like him) to play him 30 or 40 years down the road. All the other actors including David Thewlis, Saffron Burrows and Kenneth Cranham, all get "aged" through the miracles of modern makeup (please note, I put "aged" in quotes because Thewlis is given a different haircut, Burrows looks simply like she went on a bender and could bounce back if she's had a bit of water and a good night's sleep, and Cranham had some grey sprayed in his hair). This is a curiosity, but only because I'm trying hard to find something interesting in a film in which Bettany and McDowell's ACTING! is getting so messy and loud you wonder if the neighbors are gonna start complaining.

The story is this: young gangster wants to be Gangster No. 1. Current No. 1 (Thewlis) has style, flair, intelligence and patience. Young Gangster simply has ambition. Young Gangster aids and abets and generally falls into No. 1's downfall and becomes No. 1 himself. He gets and holds the No. 1 spot for years and years, yet all those years of being No. 1 never give him the style, flair, intelligence or patience of the real No. 1. No matter how much ACTING! he puts into it - both as the Old and the Young - he's No. 1 but he's not No. 1. He can ACT! and ACT! and ACT! and ACT! but he'll never make the grade.

Bettany is actually ridiculous as the young gangster. He does this thing with his mouth that is kind of a silent snarl but only makes you sneer and say out loud, "What the hell was that?" and he has this scene of carnage that would be laughable if it weren't so ostentatiously sickening. McDowell is just ludicrous...his face is one of those craggy, worn-in mugs that looks tough, but you get the sense that it just isn't. As he stomps around ACTING! and trying to be threatening, he comes off simply annoying, and you wonder why someone doesn't tell him to fuck off or flick him in the head with the knuckle of their middle finger or something.

Add a bit of overstylized set design, an oversdose of 60's everything, and mix this with fancy camera-work and editing, the kind that is over-impressed with itself, a silly story, not to mention the single-most-annoying voice over in the history of film, and you get a movie experience you wish you never had. Ricky Gervais was somewhere giving another acceptance speech and I was watching this garbage? Yikes! It cost me nothing and I still want my money back.

©2004 Kristen Ashley
CineScene