Dead Man Walking Reviews

A direct-to-video feature, DEAD MAN WALKING marks the mainstream debut of filmmakers Brown and Gernert, known previously for their documentary work and as the adult film-and-video team the Dark Bros. The action in the movie takes place in 2004, after a plague has wiped out half the earth's population. UNITUS, the ruling worldwide corporation, has segregated those infected with the disease into plague zones. Others infected with a fatal but not contagious strain, the Zero Men, may move about freely but have a life expectancy of only one or two years. A trio of escaped prisoners, led by James (essaying a role similar to the one he played in BLADE RUNNER), attacks the limo of a UNITUS industrialist who is working to create labor camps in which to quarantine contaminated people. After killing the industrialist and taking his daughter (Ludwig) hostage, Decker heads off into the plague zone. The police refuse to follow, so the industrialist's assistant, Combs (star of RE-ANIMATOR), looks for a Zero Man to help get the hostage back, hiring tough guy Hauser to track Decker down. A pastiche of everything from CAFE FLESH to THE ROAD WARRIOR, DEAD MAN WALKING is ultimately too derivative and predictable to be effective. It's also surprisingly lacking in action, with the only good sequences appearing at the end, when it's too late to matter. The satirical TV news updates (a direct rip-off of ROBOCOP), with cheerily delivered items on LA gang wars over parking space and the spreading of the plague by baby-kissing presidential candidates, are amusing but poorly integrated into the script.