One of the great zombie movies - - - if you're not too picky

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2014)

A random group of Navy SEALS sharpshooters, Israeli SWAT team members and Wild West gunslingers find themselves trapped in a Milwaukee shopping mall. . . . Okay, they're really supposed to be an ordinary group of strangers. I merely wish to point out that of the roughly 47 gazillion shots fired in the course of this film, not a one of them misses. To kill a zombie, of course, you have to shoot it in the head---not an easy shot even if both shooter and target are stationary. But we get a feeble old man shooting two handguns while being dragged backward; a guy who didn't know where his safety catch was, dispatching dozens of zombies - - - BANG!--Another zombie down. You get the idea.
This isn't criticism; I'm giving this film 8 out of 10. But you should know, if watching it for the first time, that you'll be asked not only to suspend disbelief, but to hang disbelief by the neck until dead. Plot holes are too numerous to mention; logic (even the film's internal logic) is gently slid off to the side and into oblivion; numerous major questions are never answered, notably how the sudden zombie virus originated, apparently overnight. Oh, lots of stuff.
How, then, an 8 out of 10? Because "Dawn of the Dead," unlike any other zombie film I've seen (full disclosure here: I have NOT seen the 1978 original), clearly had someone with a brain behind it. Maybe even two such someones! There's good, chiseled dialogue; consistent understatement (an early, excellent example is the TV news flash while Ana and her hubby are otherwise engaged; we're not told what the news flash is about---just that there is one); and even some character development! (Well, not the zombies; they pretty much just keep on doing what zombies do.) Also, as other IMDb reviewers have pointed out, very effective flashes of humour, the best being the scene in which the lead characters, communicating by sign with a gun-shop owner stranded atop his store across the street, suggest targets---"Burt Reynolds"--- and the gun guy takes aim and blows away the shambling zombie who resembles Burt Reynolds.
My only serious complaint with this immensely entertaining film is the portrayal of the zombies. You'd think that someone would find some workable variant on the universal zombie standard: arms outstretched, bloody mouth, eyes circled in kohl for that sunken look. It's a tried and true formula, but watch enough zombie films and you just get tired.