What’s Worth Watching: ‘Army of the Dead’ offers snappy writing, charming characters

A casino heist amid a zombie apocalypse directed by Zack Snyder, you say? All right, I’m listening. When a pair of distracted newlyweds crashes headfirst into a military transport unit on a desert highway near Las Vegas, the surviving soldiers come face to face with their mysterious cargo.

Out of the wreckage of an armored Area 51 container walks patient zero, an unsettlingly intelligent superhuman with a taste for human flesh. The “Alpha” infects the remaining soldiers and advances on Las Vegas. At this point, I should mention that the film is very justly rated R.

The city is quickly overrun with the infected. It’s a little on the nose – a city of casinos filled with zombies. But the army is able to contain the spread temporarily. Just outside the newly walled-off city of the dead, the government has built a quarantine camp for those suspected of infection. Obviously corrupt and suspiciously overpopulated with immigrants, the camp is understandably controversial.

Months after the outbreak, billionaire Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) hires Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) – a former soldier awarded the Medal of Freedom for services rendered during the zombie wars – to rescue $200 million of his money from an underground vault before the government nukes the city on the Fourth of July.

Struggling with memories of his lost loved ones, Ward consults his old teammates, Maria (Ana de la Reguera) and Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick). They agree to join the heist, and the recruiting continues with Marianne Peters, a cynical helicopter pilot (Tig Notaro); Mikey Guzman, a sharpshooter (Raul Castillo); Ludwig Dieter, a master safecracker (Matthias Schweighöfer); and Martin, Tanaka’s shady right-hand man (Garret Dillahunt).

The heist crew takes off toward the wall with ammunition and a set of safe schematics ready to take on a mindless horde, but what waits for them behind the wall is nothing like what they’d imagined.

The writing is snappy, and the characters are charming – especially the quirky safecracker and the pilot. For a film full of zombies, guns and war, “Army of the Dead” is surprisingly soft, and I mean that in a positive way. Sure, it’s about government mismanagement and greed, but it’s also about friendship, fatherhood and forgiveness.

“Army of the Dead” opens at the Magic Lantern Theatre (25 W. Main Ave.) on Friday. For more information, visit magiclanternonmain.com.