All in all this movie was not better than the original and won't be nominated for any Academy Awards, but if you're looking for entertainment and can stomach the blood it's worth checking out.
Rhames also LOOKS like an action hero rather than today's prettyboy "action heroes" such as Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck, Nicolas Cage and Keanu Reeves - who all look like they couldn't fight their way out of a cooking class for senior citizens. This was another reason that I saw this as a simple action movie - though I will say that Rhames has more acting ability than Governor Schwarzenegger, Sly, Seagal and Van Damme combined. Ken Foree's character of Peter mentioned this in the original whereas Ving Rhames' Kenneth was more of a silent action hero never having much to say. One aspect that was missing from this remake was the original movie's social commentary on the commercialism of people. We have the strong and silent male hero, the quick-thinking blond heroine, the official dumb jerk, the official slut, the young and naive girl who loses everything and needs the group's protection, the angry challenger for group leadership who has a change of heart and becomes heroic, the young trainee who disagrees with the angry challenger yet follows due to a sense of duty, and the stupid follower who gets his comeuppence. This was a movie made for film viewers, not film makers. Of course some of these characters fit the generic stereotype of a movie such as this, but I'm not surprised considering modern audiences would need such characters to maintain their interest. Also, it was interesting to have so many people make it to the mall instead of only four as in the original. I'm certain that many of us would react in the same manner if something like this were to actually happen (yes, I know it's impossible). One of my favorite "realisms" of the movie is how the characters are too attached to their loved ones to shot them when they become zombies. I also feel that the movie did a good job of showing how quickly people would turn on one another and watch out for themselves only. The idea of being able to walk right past them was abandoned. This made them come across as more menacing rather than being the slow clunkers that are seen in the original trilogy. One of the key differences that I did like was the idea of the zombies running. I could imagine the two movies co-existing, but in different parts of the world. Dawn of the Dead stuck to the same mythology of the first without giving it a complete reimagining. The movie was not made in the MTV-generation style that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake was. The outdoor scenes are filmed with a grainy, hand-held camera which gave the audience the feeling of being disoriented much the same way the characters would have felt. This is an action movie rather than horror. I was impressed with the filming more than anything. I wasn't expecting an Academy Award winning blockbuster or anything, but I did want to see the remake do the original justice. As a HUGE fan of the original Dawn of the Dead I was very skeptical of this remake.