Reviews & Previews - World War Z

Posted on Friday, June 21, 2013 at 06:00 PM

World War Z

Starring: Brad Pitt. MIreille Enos, Daniella Kertesz
Director: Marc Forster
Running time: 116 minutes
Rated: PG13
 

Uneven Apocalypse

Borrowing only the title of the book, Brad Pitt brings the zombie apocalypse to the big screen in a movie that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be. Reports of a reshoot of the last 40 minutes to save the movie might have added to the bi-polar nature of the film which entertains but does not really satisfy.

Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a family man when...oh noes! Zombies! Without much fanfare we are suddenly thrown into a mass of angry, fast zombies as they tear apart the world, right after Gerry and his wife Kainr (Enos) finish breakfast. There is barely any introduction to the outbreak and it literally explodes all over Philadelphia and the rest of the world in mere moments.

For some strange reason that we never quite find out Gerry is chosen as the man to go find out where the outbreak started. Thus begins his world hopping quest where he gains a sidekick in an Israeli soldier named Segen (Kertez) who only goes by one name because that is the cool thing to do when the world ends I guess.

The movie had some big set pieces which we have seen in the trailers. The sheer size of the infection, when we can pan back, is quite impressive and terrifying. But the movie doesn’t want to be a big zombie shoot ‘em up. Pitt doesn’t so much fight the zombies as he runs away from them in his search for a solution. This actually made sense though as he is never set up as some kind of super soldier, but more an investigator. Which isn’t to say he is one to back down from taking action when his back is to the wall, it’s just not his primary job.

Unfortunately while the director wants us to have a more intimate, intelligent story it is rather tone deaf in those moments where we could have developed that aspect more. In one scene Gerry has just saved a young boy whose parents have just been killed by zombies. Not only does the boy seem to have no reaction to the loss of his parents, but Gerry’s only response to his loss is to tell the boy to “be a man” or something to that effect. It’s as if they wrote the scene in to show what a great guy Gerry is but then forgot to actually make him seem sympathetic.

There are also some plot holes within the movie that left you scratching your head. If they were trying to make an intelligent zombie movie then there were some epic failures in logic that really weakened that aspect of the film. The movie is also set up for a sequel which means we get a lukewarm ending.

Fanboys across the net have already wailed about the movie abandoning its source story so I won’t beat a dead horse, but this film does leave you wondering what could have been. With an estimated $200 million dollar budget I never got the sense it was money well spent due to the weak story. We also saw the film in 3-D and didn’t get the kind of spectacle that you might have expected from that.
 

3 out of 5 stars.

S. Tran also writes at Cracked.com, Gunaxin.com and Uproxx.com