As much as I liked the roller-coaster ride of World War Z, I can also find just as
much NOT to like about it. Adding to the dislike column was after first seeing it only later finding out what the novel it was based on was like. There
was no super hero character(with almost super hero powers) that Brad Pitt plays with Gerry Lane, the novel delves
deep into cultural, political, and religious scopes that cover a true “World
War”. This movie has none of that. World
War Z is a carefully manufactured “blockbuster” taking absolutely no
chances what-so-ever. No chances in anything but star power, no chances on
anything religious or culturally offensive, no chances on anything too gross or
disgusting… despite the genre’s almost demand
for it… Again, I enjoyed the movie, but I have never before in my life, felt so carefully
manipulated at a movie.
The PG-13 rating is a tip off right there. Any episode of “TheWalking Dead” has ten times more frightening scare and gore to it than anything
in this movie. It so heavily panders to the largest crowd that it possibly can,
that I hesitate to even put it in the zombie movie genre.
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| Brad Pitt/Gerry Lane tries to get his family out of the city |
But despite it’s prefabricated construction it still
delivers quite a punch in tension and action. To further my analogy…
90% of people probably don’t care or even know they’re in an assembled house
for instance, as I’m sure is the case with most movie goers. And there are some
beautiful manufactured houses I’m sure… For instance, the happy family with all their MANY loving
glances to each, other during your typical breakfast mayhem scene would be like a
professional contractor looking at a front porch that was erected in 30 minutes….
it’s a sure sign this family is headed for trouble! But let’s go ahead and walk
on in!
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| The walls of Jerusalem are breached |
The "subtlety" only goes down-hill from there... but still, the
scenes of the original outbreak of the family stuck in a traffic-jam of unknown
lethal origins is played out well. Brad Pitt’s super hero Gerry Lane, first seeing people
being attacked and ‘turning’ is all done with effective rising tensions leading
to a truly frightening supermarket scramble and such. So
with them first trapped in an apartment building the narrow scope of the outbreak
is more like all previous zombie movies going back to the first Night of the Living Dead’s defense of a
simple farmhouse. But as they’re quickly lifted off the roof because Gerry Lane and his old job has contacts literally and figuratively in
high places, this movie, at least taking some cues from the book, wants to take
this up to a global scale, leaving the farmhouse far behind. It does that immensely, globe trotting Gerry all over the world in an attempt to find patient zero of
the plague. The fact he makes it to place after place, barely ahead of the marauding masses of the infected, seen so ever briefly in the movie’s trailers and ***spoiler-alert***
they’re not seen much more in the movie either! Seeing exactly how those ant-like colony columns build would have been horrifically fascination, but the movie scenes are about as brief and hectic as the trailers. Anyway, the fact he barely makes
it out time and time again, is reminiscent of John Cusack in 2012 escaping falling
sky scrapers and runways dropping out beneath his plane etc… And he even
survives a horrific airline crash… well not with-out a “scratch” I will say, but
his miraculous speedy recovery from a pretty serious injury, or how our hero
Gerry figures out what no one else can about how to combat the zombies etc… it
all only goes to show you, that back to my earlier analogy you really should not
inspect that “house” too closely…
Every time I try to go into detail about this movie I start
finding fault with it which I think is just the nature of something so
obviously pandering. So I’ll try and finish the review on a more positive note
because, as I said before, over-all, I did enjoy this movie… so I do want to give it a positive
star rating reluctant as they maybe…
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| Riding in coach really gets bad |
As I mentioned with the first outbreak and the supermarket
raid, or there’s a great scenes of them trying to quietly get to a plane in pouring
rain on bicycles, or the breaching the walls of Jericho, I mean walls of Jerusalem... somebody's walls! (And again the wide shots are fascinating of the piling hordes but still not as effective as arms reaching through boarded up windows... just for a "classic" genre example.) Anyway, and then there's' the really well-done scene of the first-class stand-off against the infected in coach scene, or the
genuine tension of them trying to get through the infected wing of the World
Health Organization building… these are all done with highly effective thrills
and truly scary tensions.
So with what will probably be a failed attempt at not being insulting I will say that ANY
less discerning audience will like this movie, which is obviously why it is doing
so well at the box office. Playing to the lowest common denominator has it’s advantages
in translating to those box-office dollars. So as much as I may feel like I
should give it only two stars or less I am willingly and effectively
being manipulated into giving it three stars. If you go just for the fun of it
you will have fun. If you start to knock on the walls to find if there are enough cross beams?
Not so much.
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