World War Z: Brad Pitt’s Hair…Plus Zombies

Hello everybody! Today we have the poor novel to screen adaptation, World War Z.

WORLD WAR Z

DIRECTOR: Mark Forster

STARRING: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox

GENRE: Disaster, Zombie

YEAR: 2013

COUNTRY: United States

Life for former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane and his family seems content. Suddenly, the world is plagued by a mysterious infection turning whole human populations into rampaging mindless zombies. After barely escaping the chaos, Lane is persuaded to go on a mission to investigate this disease. What follows is a perilous trek around the world where Lane must brave horrific dangers and long odds to find answers before human civilization falls.

World War Z begins as a tense thriller about an ordinary family seeking to survive a deadly viral outbreak. Then, most of the film is focused on Pitt’s Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator turned zombie hunter. Lane keeps an admirably cool head amid catastrophe. But his best moments are his most human, when he gently teases his daughter or awkwardly apologizes when he hears about the tragedy a health official has faced. He nervously assumes a viral “camouflage” as a snarling zombie menaces him in the film’s most suspenseful scene. These Everyman chinks in his even-keeled armor are when Pitt’s performance is at its best.

While World War Z has no shortage of impressive sights and sounds, and plenty of hair-raising moments, it gets so lost in its global scale that it doesn’t give us a flesh-and-blood hero who makes it all matter.

The story starts intimately, as Gerry and his wife Karin (Mireille Enos, The Killing) drive their two young daughters to school in Philadelphia. But what appears to be a routine traffic jam in the City of Brotherly Love soon turns into a terrifying battle with shrieking, running zombies, whose victims join their ranks less than 15 seconds after being bitten. The Lanes make it to Newark and a grocery-store looting already in progress, and the U.N. sends a copter to pick up Gerry (who’s being forced out of retirement) and his family. While the wife and kids are holed up on an aircraft carrier, Gerry travels around the world trying to figure out where the outbreak started and how to find a cure.

Director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball, Quantum of Solace) effectively generates suspense and terror, whether operating on a small scale (dark hallways, an army base under siege on a rainy night) or huge (the walls of Jerusalem being breached by what appears to be an endless supply of zombies).

PROS:

•  Brad Pitt’s performance (and his hair).
• Cinematography.
• Sound.

CONS:

•  Doesn’t stay close to source material.
• Gets lost in global conflict.
• Can’t hold my interest.

SCORE: 5.5 / 10

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