Zombie time now with this years epic scope, globe trotting zombie flick, WORLD WAR Z. "Based" on Max Brook's best selling novel of the same name, Brad Pitt travels the world in search of the source of the zombie outbreak. It's epic in size but does it live up to the hype?...check out my review after the jump...
!!!!!!!!WARNING CONTAINS MILD SPOILERS!!!!!!!
I
love zombie movies. I love the running zombies of Dawn Of Dead remake
and 28 Days Later and I love
From
an initial screenplay from celebrated sci-fi writer, J.Michael
Straczynski, the film began to take shape, that was until the
producer's disliked the direction the script was headed and brought
on Matthew Michael Carnahan (State Of Play) to help polish the
script. Then almost done with principle photography, the suits
disliked the ending and brought on writer's Damon Lindlof and Drew
Goddard (Prometheus/Cabin In The Woods) to re-write the ending. Not
only did it have scripting problems but also shooting problems, it
was over budget due to it's scale and shooting locations and reshoots
set it back. Director Marc Forster, who previously fucked up Bond,
seems to find it hard to shoot action, which is understandable when
you see his previous work, Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland and The
Kite Runner with only Machine Gun Preacher being a bit more action
packed. The guy does struggle with the epic scale and some of the
editing is so choppy you can't see what the hell is going on. But to
be fair to the guy, he did eventually pull off the most expensive
zombie film ever made.
The
plot follows Jerry Lane, a former U.N investigator who, with his wife
and two kids are caught up an intense zombie outbreak in
Pennsylvania. Managing to escape, Jerry finds himself drafted to help
investigate the source of the outbreak which takes him from the U.S
to South Korea to Israel and eventually Wales, Trying to discover the
source and a cure for the zombie virus.
A
lot of things worked for the film but a lot of things didn't work,
such as the opening attack which happens far too fast and out of
nowhere, there's very little build up except for a news story playing
on the TV in their kitchen. Then you have the escape plan, anyone who
has ever seen a zombie film will know that a crowded apartment
building is not the place to hide, if there's a zombie outbreak then
the chances are the majority of tenants will be infected and you have
just locked your self in with them, not a good idea. Secondly,
characters are introduced then killed off straight away before we
even get to see what they can do. Top hardcore elite Navy Seals
cannot survive but an unarmed U.N investigator can?...hmmmm.... The
overuse of of CGI is quite annoying, it's handy for the wide shots of
destruction but when you have a rolling ball of zombies coming
towards you, it gets a bit ridiculous. They also made the zombies
super fast, super strong and able to jump, which to me, puts them
more in line with the infected from 28 Days Later than actual
zombies, and speaking of 28 days later, World War Z pretty much rips
off the incubation period for the virus, once bitten you turn with in
ten seconds. There is no mention of the bitten actually dying then
coming back to life. The last big problem with the film is the
ending. Now being a Welshman, it was nice to hear Cardiff Airport
mentioned and that the final 3rd was set in Wales, but
what we had with this completely re-written ending is what I consider
a “Generic Zombie Movie Setting”, meaning that there are lot of
zombie films that take place or at some point in the film are set in
a medical facility which has become infected with the dead. World War
Z does this, instead of going for a huge ass kickingly awesome battle
scene like the battle of Yonkers from the book, the went for low-key
mediacal facility corridors. It didn't sit well with the scale of the
previous hour and it kind of drags the film down. One last thing
before we go onto the good shit, for a film, released with a 15
certificate in the U.K, World War Z, is completely devoid of any
gore, blood, general zombie death, Which for zombie fan's is probably
the biggest sin a film maker can make when it comes to the overall
brutality and visceral action of a zombie film. We all know R rated
zombie films make money, just look at the previously mentioned 28
Days Later/Weeks Later, Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn Of The Dead and
Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright's Shaun Of The Dead, hell even zombie romance
Warm Bodies had gore, and that was a 12A.
Now
for the good stuff. As I said previously, Marc Forster does struggle
to shoot action, but with WWZ he's managed to get much better, it's
still all choppy editing and sound FX but it's handled better than
he's handled it previously. The epic scenes of zombie chaos are quite
exciting especially the attack on Jerusalem, when the chopper flies
over the grounds outside of their giant wall it's quite a cool shot,
even if you can't take the wall of zombies seriously the Jerusalem
attack is still pretty good part of the film. Brad Pitt is pretty
good as Jerry, it's not his best performance but it still manages to
carry the film and Peter Capaldi pops up towards the end as a World
Health Organization doctor along with Moritz Bliebtreu from Run Lola
Run. But despite all the flaws the film has and for a film with a
budget of $200+ million and run time of 117 minutes, it's still an
exciting action adventure film that totally engrossed me. I'm
surprised the film ran under 2hrs as I fully expected this to run to
at least 140+ minutes considering the problems it had during it's
production.
Overall,
World War Z is an entertaining popcorn action flick that happens to
have a lot of zombies in it. Was Marc Forster the best choice as
director for this film? No, but the man through his hat in the ring,
rolled up his sleeves and gave it a shot and for what he managed to
do, I commend him, had a more experiences action/horror director
handled this with a tighter script, World War Z could have been the
zombie movie to end all zombie movies but as it stands, WWZ is just
another zombie film. Entertaining but ultimately flawed. It gets 3
stars out of this guy!..
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