The Walking Dead

(1994) The Walking Dead WAR

Not to be confused with the TV series that started in 2010 which involves zombies, this is strictly a 'war' movie made in 1994 from HBO written and directed by Preston A. Whitmore which focuses on five marines being stranded somewhere along the Vietnam jungle, using the saving mission operation as a backdrop to tell viewers how these specific five became marines in the first place. It includes a preacher, a thug, and a young man who was living in his mom's basement. Not one war story had anything to do with pride. I mean, what are the odds that all five of them had an "ulterior motive" for joining. The other thing I had a problem with, is that there are times, the fighting war scenes didn't look like how actual war scenes was supposed to look like, since it looked fake and stagey, and despite the good ending, it doesn't offer anything new viewers can't come up with themselves.

I came across this film randomly and ended up enjoying it immensely, much more than I expected to from the jacket cover. This is an unconventional 'Nam flick and the director's risk-taking is palpable and for me it energised the storytelling. The Walking Dead is not an action movie, nor is it a shoot-em-up. It doesn't fetishise gore; the battle scenes serve the plot like a Greek chorus punctuating the real story: tracing the tragi-comedic decisions of the main characters, with a healthy dose of pathos at life's vagaries.

A handful of black soldiers are thrown together after surviving everyone else in the mission, and as the film progresses we're given insight into what led up to their dire situation. It's immersive storytelling, and there's a theatre quality to the scenes - the intimacy of the performances evoked a play-like weightiness for me. Every major character has a backstory that is revealed in monologues and flashbacks, and each soldier provides us with some insight into the consequences of reliance on each other. Another worthy topic explored: why did some folks ship off voluntarily to Vietnam?

The war then provides the backdrop for parable-like tales of how impulsivity, vulnerability, rejection, naivité, self-preservation and hardship can bring us to crossroads. It also explores the relationship between interdependence and survival, and a need/repulsion dyad. How do you relate to people when they're dying unexpectedly all around you? Or betraying you? Or desired by you? All the performances feel fresh, relatable, poignant and unpretentious. Characters have very real mundane lives and methods of escapism. The continual foreshadowing itself becomes a kind of subtext: things might be fine this minute, but things rarely stay fine for long, especially in the face of human frailty. I liked that feeling of gentle gloom, it built suspense for me.

Sure there are some realism quibbles, but this film is far better than a Rambo (and you don't hear people criticizing Rambo for not being realistic!). And ignore the conspiracy-theorist reviews -- there's nothing in this movie comparing casualty numbers between African Americans vs. Caucasians. Four black soldiers are thrown together, and the story begins.

The dialogue is well-crafted, real, and served raw, and there was more than one scene that I found reminiscent of David Mamet or the dark banter of Reservoir Dogs, and maybe even a hint of a battle-fatigued Henry V. There are some hilarious lines in here, and a fantastic stunt scene with a window for the stunt nuts.

The Walking Dead comes across as a stage play, with proper beats between lines at times when actors have realisations or internal turmlil. Backstories are effectively counterposed with the scenes in the present (jungle): 20/20 hindsight and resignation force the soldiers to reflect, retell and relive their past decisions in a kind of homeostasis while they fight to survive and get along. This homeostasis is broken at the end as hindsight and regret are less important than future-building.

I didn't find the plot or ending predictable at all. Although the denouement is a bit trite, it felt satisfying in that parable kind of way. The characters who survive get to have an arc in this denouement, confirming that you can go on, you can survive, you can live down mistakes, and people can change when they're willing to be vulnerable and honest with themselves.

This is an okay movie if you have an hour and a half to spare. If you like witty humor and rejoinders, then this is the movie for you. Eddie Griffin is hilarious in this movie. He has some of the best quips given to a black man in a movie. Maybe it's just me but I love funny remarks and cool characters. Eddie Girffin plays one of the coolest black characters on film in this movie. He should be given a spin off of this role. Maybe he was just playing himself. If you want to base this movie on race then if your Caucasian you might not take much affinity to it since it deals particularly with blacks and black issues. But if you just don't care and like to see people get their heads blown off and simple storytelling with cool quotes then you will love it!

Give me a break. The Vietnam war was a real war where real people died. Total U.S. fatalities in the theater were over 55,000, if I recall correctly. And as wars go, this one was not managed very well, in my opinion, but this movie is disgraceful in its blatantly dishonest portrayal of the war. All of the characters are basically comic book characters. All of the behaviors displayed by all of the characters are behaviors that would never have been exhibited by anyone who actually found themselves in a war zone. The movie implicitly wants to be taken seriously, but you cannot take it seriously. The white officer leading the platoon is especially a comic book character. His enlisted men show him a level of disrespect that is so far over the top, and so far beyond what any officer in the U.S.M.C would ever tolerate of his marines, that the movie becomes a comic book within just a few minutes. And it is a bad, bad, comic book. In reality, a marine officer will put his life on the line for his marines at the drop of a hat, and his non-commissioned officers will do the same for him. No non-commissioned officer in the marines would ever speak to his superior officer in the way that these jackasses do. Anyone that did would find himself doing hard time. In the U.S.M.C., discipline is everything. Discipline is the life blood of the Marine Corps. This movie isn't just unrealistic, it is disgraceful. The people who made it are shameless, and have no knowledge of the Marine Corps.

I came across this movie after hearing Scarface's song by the same title from thee soundtrack, both of which I didn't know existed until recently and that's a shame. I could have already been up on game with this movie. Kind of like Dead Presidents, the movie and the song tells of the military, United States, and why black people shouldn't be fighting for a country yet to fight for them. Casting was excellent. Booyah!