Redcon 1 (2018)

After a zombie virus outbreak London is considered a no-man's land. The potential cure or way to stop the spread of the virus is found by a scientist who has holed himself up within London. A team of international special forces is sent in to locate and bring the scientist out so research can continue. They soon find the zombies are more than just learning, they have progressed to organizing into armies of their own and using weapons. The premise is good for a blood soaked action film with the use of both guns and martial arts. What we get is a wandering plot with action scenes that barely spark even a little adrenaline. 

 

The characters are given such a small introduction it felt like the movie wanted us to sit back and not care about the character’s emotional well being. The creators had other plans. This movie wants you to care for the characters but without a lead in and time for us to bond with these soldiers this information came spoon fed in tangent scenes that only served to slow down the film between action sequences. One soldier commits suicide as a result of getting infected. Because there was no real emotional attachment given to this character the movie had to make up for this. There was, at the minimum, 4 replays of the same suicide scene to try and drive home that the other characters felt his loss. 

 

These tangents are not reserved for characters as their journey ends up being overly complicated for the sake of world building. These sequences are always highlighted by how quickly they are overcome. For instance, one involved part of the team being captured by a military force of undead. Within 15 minutes of screen time this bump in the road was introduced, talked over, then resolved with the only real apparent obstacle was they were compromised at the end and must run for their lives. This sequence could have been larger and felt more important, but the number of places they needed to go and people the story intended them to meet made it so the movie had only a small amount of time to dedicate to each location. They had good concepts but needed to cut down on these ideas they wanted to show.

 

The action sequences, what this movie hyped itself up to be, had some gems amid the overall blandness of the action. Where there was a scene of a bulky strongman of a character lifting up zombies and throwing them through walls. With wonderful special effects and usage of the camera to show how impactful each hit was. This was a stunning scene to behold, but if only the rest were this way. Other sequences we had martial arts that while impressive would get cut up into shots like the following. Show character starting the kick, switch to view of just zombie jerking from impact, then character again lowering their leg. Copy this technique to gunplay, close ups of the shooter, then zombies falling, then back to shooters without an establishing shot or broader view of the carnage or the zombie and soldier sharing the same screen. Not to mention that it is not a good idea to wrap your legs around a zombie’s head to do a throw, offering up your nethers for a zombie buffet. 

 

This movie had such good ideas and even proved that they are capable of some legitimate gruesome and impressive scenes. Redcon 1 needed to have another few runs through the drafts to remove the bloat that made the story way too convoluted to be interesting. With excess bloat removed they could take the focus they had on the few gems of action sequences and expand that to make the zombie smashing action much more impressive and fun. What happened was a story that couldn’t stick to either a zombie action flick or dramatic story of comrades fighting overwhelming odds. Sadly that brought down the quality of the overall movie.

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