One for: the Crazies
The Crazies needed a Keanu Reeves type: someone to look worried for minutes on end only to crack a half-smile so easy and reassuring, it could only come from the mouth of a genuine movie star. Timothy Olyphant as sheriff David Dutton is not blessed with this gift. He is stiffer than most of the zombies he battles off. Olyphant belongs in a Michael Mann movie or a shaving commercial.
The Crazies follows the zombie movie structure blindly, or maybe just lazily. Act I: zombies show up; we’ve got to fight them. Act II: it’s a government thing; survivors must regroup and take a break from fighting zombies. (Supposedly we get to know the non-zombie characters better in this act.) Act III: the zombies come back; we’ve got to fight them again.
Now I admit there were scenes in Act I where I almost spilled my popcorn, but that was only a few times. By the time the gov’t showed up — the filmmakers attempt to make them scary, too — my popcorn was never again in jeopardy.
Don’t see it unless you see every zombie movie that comes out and you take zombies really, really seriously.
