OVERLORD

OVERLORD

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2018 -- Operation Overlord was the military name for the D-day invasion planned by General Eisenhower and British General Montgomery and masterfully executed by General George Patton. It was massive invasion and assault on Nazi Germany's coastal fortifications and ambitious effort to destroy Nazi strongholds and zombie laboratories.

Okay, the last bit is according to the several films developed over the last few years pertaining to the subject. "Outpost" (2008 - 2013), "Dead Snow" (2009), "Blood Creek" (2008), "Nazis at the Center of the Earth" (2012), "War of the Dead" (2011), "Frankenstein's Army" (2013), "Zombie Massacre 1-2" (2013, 2015) and " Angry Nazi Zombies" (2012) all say that Nazis created zombies for a super army of undead. Therefore it must be true.

Director Julius Avery ("Son of a Gun" and upcoming "Flash Gordon") adds his two-cents as he adapts writers Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith's script about the strange experiments the Nazis conducted on humans; this is not a spoiler - the experiments begin with the letter "Z".

Taking a page from George Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead" and "Dawn of the Dead", Avery made the central character an African American. Jovan Adepo plays Boyce a drafted US Army paratrooper about to land in Europe. [NOTE: The film depicts blacks jumping alongside whites in WW2 which is historically inaccurate. The armed services were segregated. The only black paratroopers back then were the famed "Triple Nickle" 555 Parachute Infantry that jumped from 1944-1947. They are the ones who located the Nazi Zombie labs.]

Their mission is to find a radio tower installed on a church, blow it up and leave. After their plane comes under heavy fire, by the time they land, there are only a few remaining and suspicious acting demolition expert Ford (played by Wyatt Russell) is now squad leader through attrition.

They get to the church and find the antenna and something more ominous in a bunker lab below. It seems the Nazi's were reanimating dead people, an event foretold by local cutie Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier) and her grotesque-looking crazy aunt (Meg Foster). Let the bloodletting begin in what devolves from a tight army action film into a better-than-average B-movie flick.

Though the big zombie battles in the last third of the film are rather cheesy; even comical... the movie has enough initial tautness to rank it above a midnight madness schlock film. There are some fairly decent acting turns by both Adepo (whom we saw in Denzel Washington's "Fences") and Ollivier ("The Misfortunes of François Jane"), whom like Johnny Depp ("A Nightmare on Elm Street"), Leonardo DiCaprio ("Critters 3") and Tom Hanks (He Knows You're Alone") should be able top make the turn to better roles.

Though with a hefty production budget of $38 million, it doesn't approach the costly $150 million budget of "World War Z", but could still be classified as a "B movie.

"Overlord" is a zombie-loving, WWII loving, Nazi bashing good time that comes equally packaged with suspense and cheap B-movie slasher action. -- GRADE C+ -- GEOFF BURTON

GEOFF BURTON