Bill Murray, Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver
“THE DEAD DON’T DIE” My rating: C+
104 minutes | MPAA rating: R
The world really doesn’t need another zombie movie.
On the other hand, the world can always use another Jim Jarmusch movie.
Except, I guess, when it’s a zombie movie.
The latest from the idiosyncratic Jarmusch, “The Dead Don’t Die,” has been written and played for chuckles. It adds nothing to the zombie genre (unless you count the last-reel appearance of an alien spaceship) but allows a huge cast of players (Carol Kane and Iggy Pop, for instance, as a couple of the voracious corpses) to have fun riffing on the whole walking dead phenomenon.
In sleepy Centerville the sheriff, Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray), and his deputy, Ronnie Peterson (Adam Driver), spend most of their time drinking coffee and keeping tabs on a forest-dwelling hermit (Tom Waits).
They mediate disputes among the citizenry, folk like a MAGA hat-wearing farmer (Steve Buscemi) and a black handyman (Danny Glover).
All the while, Deputy Ronnie is oblivious to the fact that his co-worker, Deputy Mindy (Chloe Savigny), has a huge crush on him.
The two lawmen are a sort gun-toting Mutt & Jeff who face each new revelation of horrors with deadpan drollery.
Tilda Swinton
Anyway, one night the late citizens of Centerville begin crawling from their graves and gnawing on the living. You know the drill.
Among the more resourceful citizens is a funeral home operator (Tilda Swinton) with a martial arts fetish. Oh, yeah, and a samurai sword.
None of the characters are particularly well developed, which means we don’t care if they quickly join the ranks of the lurching horde. But at least most everybody gets to say something funny before succumbing.
Top honors go, as you’d expect, to Murray, who responds to the carnage less with horror than with a sort of world-weary resignation.
Here’s the bottom line: the film’s trailer contains just about every good laugh in the picture and never wears out its welcome. Also, it’s free.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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