Battle of the Damned: A Review

I watched Battle of the Damned because it contained three things: Dolph Lundgren, zombies and zombie-killing robots. Pretty exciting, yes?

Here's why it was bad:

1. They weren't proper zombies, but rather people infected with an escaped bio-toxin with effects not dissimilar to those of 28 Days Later. They were really quite easy to kill and it just seemed like bad planning that had lead to the unnamed Malaysian city having to be quarantined. Film makers of the world, don't promise me zombies and then not have zombies in your film. Oh, and having a smart-arse character point out that they're not really zombies doesn't help.
2. The story behind the robots was that they'd walked (apparently across the sea) from Japan where they'd malfunctioned and killed lots of people, but that's okay because they'd been fixed. It just seemed to be a massive coincidence that they were there and were able to tell the difference between healthy people and the crazy infected people because of a difference in body temperature.
3. None of the characters were sympathetic and I didn't really care if they lived or died, mainly because the story was really poorly developed, including a "twist" at the end that could have provided lots of tension if they'd bothered to incorporate it earlier.
4. It committed the cardinal sin of being a good idea that was just badly executed. I mean, zombie-killing robots and Dolph Lundgren! How could that go wrong? By taking itself too seriously and not just going for crazy action awesomeness, that's how.

But, because I like to keep things positive, here are some good things:

1. Dolph Lundgren's character was called "Max Gatling." That's amazing.
2. The robots were incredibly polite and a pleasure to watch, even if their story-line made no sense.
3. There was some excellent "crazy infected people" acting from the extras. In fact, cut everything else out and have them running around and then getting into a big fight with the robots and this could make a reasonably entertaining short film.

In summary, take it that I've seen this one on your behalf and let's hope that next time I get all excited by a movie containing zombie-killing robots, it's as fantastic as it should be.