Dead Heist (2007)

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Just perfect...

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

The opening shots promised Zombies, the first thing to upset me was that I had to wait for nearly 45 minutes to actually see zombie's lurching into shots and causing mayhem. Basically some stereotypically gangster geezer (Ackson played by D.J. Naylor) wants out of a gang, but he is made to do "one more job" for the crime lord who seems to have his own empire including a clothing line (adverts and slogans for 'Avirex' are everywhere like a product placement parody) and a lesbian porn factory. The job is to check up on and supervise another crew who want to rob a bank (the four man crew is headed up by Brandon Xavier's Ski character). Upon Ackson arriving he finds the crew have changed their plans because they are inexperienced and impatient idiots; instead of the robbery being planned for a day or two they decide to rob it whilst scoping it out. Things go wrong (as with all rush jobs like this), cops, security and patrons are threatened and in some instances shot in cold blood, the silent alarm is triggered and a police/SWAT team turn up and surround the bank. To make things worse their get-away driver panics and flees the scene with the get-away car!! Despite Ackson trying to put some controls in place and have a smooth robbery Ski has caused mayhem and there is no apparent escape. Scene set, queue the Zombies….. These zombies aren't regular zombies, they are vampiric zombies, this is actually explained by Hunter (Big Daddy Kane) who advises they are a result of cross contamination of mutagens - of course they are. The vampire-zombies break through the police line and begin to infiltrate the bank queueing up Hunter's arrival. Hunter is an ex-government agent and he wants to save the handful of people who have so far survived but they have to listen and follow orders, which of course has been proved as difficult already with Ski not listening to Ackson. The group manage to slay an awful lot of vampire-zombies leaving blood splashed everywhere but who will survive and what will be left of them?This film thought it was "Boyz in da Hood" crossed with "Shawn of the Dead" but wasn't close to being as good as either. It felt like a lot of style over content at times as the story was fairly weak, it just seemed like a lot of peacocking to prove how cool the 'gang/thug life is". There were times where the narrative/dialogue was too 'street' and it was difficult to understand what the actors where talking about unless you have a degree in gang thug-o-nomics, even after watching lots of typical 'street/gang' films there were some things I was baffled by - none the less I figured it out eventually despite the script calling for a curse word apparently every two words. Saying that though I have seen a lot worse films, this film didn't try to be big - it's not like there was a big budget and they blew it trying to make something epic. It's more that there was little to no budget and the production crew just wanted to make something fun - in that sense it succeeded, even with the sometimes difficult dialogue. The biggest let down for me was the zombies, Bo Webb the directory obviously wanted to combine random film folklores and bring something new and original with these vampire- zombies but at times it was too mixed up. Things like the vampire- zombies only coming out at night on a full moon, the varying ways to kill them, the biology and strengths/ weakness of them. As mentioned the zombies didn't get enough screen time and rather than being a threat they just came across as mildly annoying.The big question then, did I enjoy the film? I guess I didn't hate it, but that doesn't necessarily confirm that I enjoyed it does it. I tolerated the film and it wasn't a waste of 90 minutes of my life, but likewise I wont be writing home to tell everybody to watch it immediately.

Story Synopsis: Ex-soldier Ackson is getting tired of the babysitting jobs his boss, the rap mogul Hustle, gives him, intending to quit for a better lifestyle. Hustle agrees, promising to give Ackson one last job. Meanwhile, a group of young hoods are planning a heist, working on a tip from an imprisoned uncle who was a master bank robber, targeting a banking depot in a small town south of Miami. They approach Hustle for support, Hustle agreeing to the deal on two conditions – they must give him a sizable cut of the profits & they must take Ackson along for insurance. Arriving in the town, Ackson tells the gang to lie low in a motel while he cases the bank. But the hoods, being the impatient boneheads they are, hit the bank while Ackson is still inside. As is expected with all rush jobs, the plan goes awry with the robbers shooting a cop in cold blood & their getaway driver panics & flees with the car. But that is not the worst of it – once night falls, an army of the undead stages an assault on the town.Film Analysis: Sometimes you just don't know which direction a genre will go. After coming back to life in the early 2000s, the zombie film has produced some pretty wild combinations. There have been films about zombie soldiers, zombie cops, zombie vigilantes & so on. But until 2007 there has never been a film about zombies & hip-hop. Before I continue, I must admit that I'm not a big fan of the whole hip-hop / rap scene. In saying that, I don't mean the gritty urban poetry of the late Tupac Shakur or even Eminem's clever self-depreciating lyrics. I mean the whole gangster rap genre, with various untalented rappers trying to glorify a life where women are treated as objects, pimping, illegal substances & drive-by shootings are seen as fashionable things to do & so on. Here's a tip for those hip-hop stars: if you want to make it big, try holding down a good blue-collar job & support your various families by renouncing gang life & stop treating women as sex objects – they are human beings too.Dead Heist is a rather strange mix of horror film & crime flick, with a group of bank robbers trapped in a bank with an army of zombie-like vampires roaming outside. As far as plot goes, it is really an uncredited adaptation of the classic novel I Am Legend marketed for the hip-hop crowd. In that regard it is hard to fault. But what really stands out about the film is the fact that horror & hip-hop don't go too well together. One of the most notorious attempts in this field was Da Hip Hop Witch, an extremely infantile filmic experiment where a bunch of rappers (including a young Eminem) would tell off-the-cuff improvised stories about encountering a witch, their stories being completely nonsensical & unintentionally hilariously inept. And the less said about the later Leprechaun sequels, the better.While its marketing might be hard to fault, what makes Dead Heist strictly a mediocre film is that the film doesn't do anything other than to put a cast of young hoods in a tough situation & have them deal with it solely by acting tough, shooting at anything that moves & overusing F-words. There is no innovation here (despite the novelty value of the plot) or even cohesive filmmaking, just a routine zombie film.Which brings me to the zombies. The creatures shown here are not exactly zombies – instead they are generic undead. Their traits are quite interesting – the creatures come out at night & only on a new moon; they can only be stopped by a shot or blow to the heart – but don't make any sense biologically. Particularly their weakness, which brings them closer to being vampires than zombies. Director Bo Webb mishandles the action scenes a few times, most notably in the climax where the survivors take on the dozens of 'zombies' by shooting their pistols wildly & swiping away with their knives – this is probably the least convincing (& most flatly directed) human versus zombie fight in the whole of the 2000s.On the acting front, the cast give some okay performances, in particular D.J. Naylor, who manages to get the mix of hard-headed professionalism & perpetually-annoyed irritableness down perfectly, making a pretty good hero (for a white boy!). Traci Dinwiddie makes a nice heroine as the female deputy while Zach Hanner makes the most of his limited role as the bank manager. As for the black members of the cast, E-40 does the usual stereotypical role of the rap mogul who plans criminal acts while making lesbian porn on the side while rapper Big Daddy Kane actually does a good job as the ex-government mercenary who has hunted the creatures since the beginning.

A bank heist goes horribly bad when (what else) the dead come in for food.As far as recent Urban Zombie movies go, "Dead Heist" is better than "Zombiez," but worse than "Hood of the Living Dead" and "Gangs of the Dead." That's not saying much, especially when you consider the fact that "Hood" and "Gangs" are bad movies too.The dead here are cut from the same cloth as the speedy zombies from the "Dawn of The Dead" remake and the infected from "28 Days Later" and it's sequel, only generic instead of interesting or frightening. The gore is nothing new, though the fact that the dead can only be killed by being shot in the heart (and you're to blame...) is a poor attempt at trying something different.As far as acting goes, Big Daddy Kane does the best job. He's not good, mind you, but he does the best job. Amusingly, while Bone Crusher and E-40 are advertised as staring in it, yet they aren't in the movie for very long-Bone Crusher appears in the beginning as a patron in a strip club so tame it could have passed for MTV's "The Grind", then disappears. Meanwhile, E-40 has less than 5 minutes of screen time as a porn director, and gives a "alright, where's my paycheck already" level performance. The rest of the cast ranges from a dead ringer for Vin Diesel to the white female cop, a white businessman thinking of joining the Nation of Islam (ha ha), and plenty of stereotypical gang banger characters.While not the worst recent Urban horror movie, there's still nothing worth recommending here. I have no idea whether or not the fact that this reminded me of the "Attack of the Street Pimps" bit from "Hollywood Shuffle" is a good thing or a bad thing. It's probably a bad thing.

I rate movies on how they perform compared to what they are supposed to be. For instance, Jason X is almost a 10, because it is bad and intended to mock the Friday the 13th movies. So that being said, this gets a solid 8. That is an 8 out of 10 for B Zombie movies.SO when I saw the title and the description on my cable system, I had to watch. I said to my girlfriend, "I have to watch this. It has Zombies and bank robbery. Two great movie themes in one. What could be better?" Well, the titles started and I realized this was a Ghetto,Zombie Bank Heist movie. OMFG, it just got better. Kinda like Dead Presidents with Zombies.When I saw this, I then said to my GF, "This could only get better if there was a spy or secret agent or something." Well, halfway into the movie we are introduced to a government agent character whose job it is to kill the zombies. PERFECT! So yeah, this is a B movie. But, as was said before by others, you can tell they tried. This is a fun romp. The acting is weak, but not terrible. Some of the characters are engaging, but not the ones that are intended to be.The camera work is pretty good and the movie flows. It follows the formula for a zombie movie, but that is the point. This isn't avant garde, this is a zombie movie.It is good for a laugh with some zombie loving friends.