Battle of the Damned

Zombie movie with robots? Sure? Why not? But it is not necessarily a great combination.

"Battle of the Damned" basically have the most simple story lines of all times. A city in Asia has become afflicted with a virus that turns people into crazed killers. And corporate CEO hires military expert Max (played by Dolph Lundgren) to infiltrate the infected quarantine zone and bring back his daughter.

That was basically the storyline. And you get what you pay for here, a shallow storyline that is driven by the action alone. The story is not overly interesting or deep. It works for what it is intended to do though, and the movie is entertaining enough in itself.

As for the infected, or zombies, well first of all they were hyper-mobile and agile, running around and making odd bestial growling sounds. Two things that doesn't sit well with me, and that was a factor that pulled the movie down in my opinion. There isn't really any gore or mayhem here, as the infected are basically just Asian people covered in dirt, soot and wear torn and shredded clothing.

Action-wise, then "Battle of the Damned" is alright. Not super great, but it is enjoyable, and well worth watching a single time.

With the people hired for the various characters and roles, you know what you are getting for your money's worth, so don't expect Oscar winning performances here.

If you enjoy Dolph Lundgren's movies, then I am sure you will find some enjoyment in "Battle of the Damned". If you are watching the movie out of your love for zombies, as I did, then this movie doesn't really impress.

After a zombie outbreak in Asia, the mercenary Major Max Gatling (Dolph Lundgren) is hired by a wealthy industrialist that was the responsible for the pandemic to rescue his daughter Jude (Melanie Zanetti) with his team from a city. Max loses his group that is killed by the zombies and stays alone to accomplish his assignment. He finds Jude and learns that there are other survivors; Duke (David Field), Reese (Matt Doran), Elvis (Jen Sung), Lynn (Lydia Look) and Anna (Oda Maria). She refuses to flee alone without the others and Duke and Elvis handcuff Max on a power pole to die. However, when Reese discovers that Jude is pregnant and the city will be firebombed, he rescues Max to save Jude. Then they find a group of robots killing zombies and Max reprograms them to help the survivors to escape. Will the group succeed to escape?

"Battle of the Damned" is a laughable movie with Dolph Lundgren in the lead role. The idea of zombies and robots is original but the execution is very poor: terrible screenplay and dialogs are terrible; and the camera work in the mayhem of zombies is awful. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Zumbis e Robôs" ("Zombies and Robots")

A contagious virus escapes from a research facility turning people into flesh eating killers. The city is quarantined and a soldier and his team are hired to rescue his daughter.

Christopher Hatton writes and directs this low budget science fiction romp that fuses two sub-genre subjects, the modern zombie-infected and Robots. Coincidently it shares the same basic concept as Zombie Massacre (2013) and elements from a lesser known zombie film Severed: Forest of the Dead (2005).

Shaky camera shots aside it's a b-film that has atmosphere thanks to the unusual Malaysian location and interesting architecture. The generic costume design fittingly works, the music by Joe Ng and Ting Si Hao although borrowing from many sci-fi films is excellent. The violence is aplenty, with the gun and abundance of knife play being effective enough.

There's no small Dolph Lundgren cameo it's very much is his film focusing on his Max Gatling character throughout. Both actresses Oda Maria as Anna and Melanie Zanetti as Jude are notable with the rest of the cast being adequate given Hatton's limited script. The zombies sadly are not the slow shambling kind and the robot CGI effects are a mixed bag. Nevertheless, the relationship between both the main robot (voiced by Tim Cooper) and Max is quiet interesting and humorous. Beneath the low end production there is quite a good story even if it swaps development, depth and pacing for action.

Don't expect too much, Hatton has a lot on his hands juggling all the high concept elements coherently and keeps it linear but what is on offer is the infected, robots and soldier high-jinks and basically that's what it delivers.

now see, this is a fun little zombie movie. instead of focusing on the survival aspect, this is mostly big Dolph and his buddies pummeling and running from HUGE hoards of zombies. one weird part of this film is that it includes a band of four "service robots" who, in previous film "ROBOTROPOLIS" massacred a mining town due to a program corruption. now this is even stranger because I've never seen the previous film, but heard about it on the message board here, and in THIS film, the robots mention the massacre and program error, so its the same robots LMAO!!!sorry to ramble on, but give this one a try, its a pretty fun throwback to trashier days starring a great action trash actor ;)

There was some sketchy dialog particularly noticeable when Dolph's character max was speaking with his fellow soldier while they were walking on the bridge early in the movie, and some of the acting was stilted, but I loved that the zombies moved quickly and the robots were fun. The Dolphster is getting old, you could tell by his movements, especially when he runs, but he is in excellent shape. Dolph plays the part of the stoic unwilling hero well. The CGI was not Lucas film quality but it was not distracting. The main characters had clear personalities and weren't all generic. I only wish the end wasn't so predictable as to who would survive.