Leofwine_draca
CODE RED is a cheap, dark, zombie war movie shot in Bulgaria although financed in the US. It lacks a proper cast and any proper name actors, but it features a wealth of low rent military action if that's your cup of tea; there's hell of a lot of shaky cam work here, sitting alongside mild gore scenes, shoot-outs, executions and more besides.The plotting isn't very complex and half of it is delivered in amateurish exposition scenes of guys sitting around smoking cigars in offices - that kind of thing. To put it simply, a biological weapon has the power to turn people into zombies, and now a squad of soldiers must escape a war zone filled with a very different kind of enemy. CODE RED is all very low rent and lacking even the most basic characterisation, but a fast pace means I suppose it passes the time quickly if you're in the mood for trash.
marthanewsome
The story was solid to start with until it brought you from WWII to present day. The US was taking over an old Bulgarian/Soviet ammunition site and a special force person was sent in to investigate an odd event on base. Firstly, he goes to the Bulgarian home of a US Bio-research Doctor and the old woman that lives at the end of the hall is speaking English to him. Doubt that. Secondly, the Doctor who is female and obviously a single mother, as the very young daughter answers the door. I found this strange, as she is very young and answers the door in a slum by herself, without waking her mother. Once in there the third amazing thing happens. The Doctor explains that she was fired from the base by the Bulgarian Captain. She was obviously brought there by the US, not the Bulgarians, so technically how could he fire her? Also, this Doctor is not a very good mother and drags her daughter to a bomb shelter by hand and gets separated from her. A small girl like that should be carried easily by her. If it was my child, I would have easily carried her. This happens again towards the end where she is carrying her and puts her down because she wants her stuffed bunny and the little girl gets bitten by one of the infected. I just shook my head in disbelief that this idiot mother did it again. You think she would have learned the first time. The infected looked like bloodied elephant men and some had no eyes, but seemed to be able to see people just fine. There were many other moments where the characters seemed dumb to the point, that you just wanted to scream "Wake Up Dumb Dumb". It took a lot to keep watching to the end and was overly predictable. If you can't find anything to watch and have had way too much coffee, you might want to give it a try.
railhan-1
I saw the trailer of the movie a few years ago. It got me excited but then I kinda forgot about it. Found the finished movie by accident recently.The bad things first - It's not a movie that will become a cult classic or even memorable. The script is pretty usual. There is lots of cheese in both dialogues and characters. The main character, GI Joe El Macho, aka Special Forces agent John McGahey was literally made of Mozzarella and topped with Gorgonzola. FX are a bit old school and green screen is apparent in some scenes.The plot is based on real events that happened in Bulgaria. Few years ago there was an "accident" at a weapons warehouse at Chelopechene. It was widely suspected that it was a cover up for stolen munitions. First 15 minutes(scenes of Stalingrad) are excellent. I think they were shot by a team different than the one that did the rest. Zombies are plenty. I prefer fast and agile ones(28 Days Later type), and they are in Code Red. Acting is decent. The characters were shallow but actors did a decent job to make them believable. A note to my fellow Bulgarian viewers - The image of Bulgaria presented in the movie is cliché 90s Eastern Europe. I don't know if this is required to make the movie marketable abroad, but please don't make a fuss about it. We are either too touchy or too nihilistic about this kind of stuff. And please go and ****** buy the movie if you liked it. It's a local production with decent results. We don't get too many of them. Please support the people that managed to do it.This is a B movie so if you are general viewer the score is 4/10. As a horror/zombie genre fan I would give it an honest 6/10. My actual score is 7/10 but that's due to sentimental reasons :)
blackestofsmiths
OK so first lets get the bad things out of the way...some rather dubious and clichéd dialogue,some rather clichéd and dubious actions by the 'good guy' towards the end of the film and a rather odd feeling that something is missing....IMDb lists the run time as 118 minutes but the UK DVD runs for 90 minutes??? and at points in the film it feels like some stuff has been cut away.now the good news.decent acting,plot although not original,good production value and fx and some pretty cool zombies.lots of old school fx work and blood squibs.think planet terror meets doomsday meets lenzi nightmare city.well worth a watch for zombie fans.real world it's 2/10 but in the horror direct to video world it's a solid 7/10.
AD
