Directed by:
Marc ForsterComposer:
Marco BeltramiCast:
Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, David Morse, דניאלה קרטס, James Badge Dale, David Andrews, Ludi Boeken, Matthew Fox, Moritz Bleibtreu, John Gordon Sinclair (more)Plots(1)
UN employee and committed family man Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is forced to abandon his wife and children when a global pandemic hits, turning ordinary people into violent subhuman monsters with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. Due to the nature of his job, Gerry is deemed one of the very few people left on Earth with the ability to find the source of the virus and ultimately a cure, but will he be able to do so before the last remnants of humanity are completely eradicated? (Paramount Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (13)
A very decent spectacle. It has momentum, ideas and above all an excellent main character who is ready to undergo the worst not because some pompous patriotic duty calls him to it, but because he is protecting his own family. Brad Pitt is excellent, and although he's no superman, and I really liked how logical his character is, how he makes instinctive decisions and improvises (making a bayonet or forearm guards, plus other moments that I won't reveal - one of them has to do with the roof of a house and the other with a hand and a knife...). World War Z should be longer, though, because I couldn't help feeling that quite a lot of the plot is missing and many things or characters are somehow unexplained or unnecessarily rushed (David Morse, why everyone in Jerusalem suddenly started singing...). Otherwise, everything is just fine. Some of the situations were almost blackly humorous (Dr. Fassbach, the way North Korea fights the disease...), the ending didn't have a single flaw (except that it reminded me a bit of the ending of I am Legend). The stunts are almost perfect, the action is fortunately much clearer than in Quantum of Solace, the zombies are swarming like ants and are very (un)pleasantly unpredictable, and of all the biting swarming I probably liked the Jerusalem episode the most (despite the aforementioned criticism). And Marco Beltrami composed excellent music, but this time it is more interesting after seeing the film. A strong four stars.
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World War Z should have been very incoherent, it mixes very different approaches to the zombie sub-genre, but in the end it’s a surprisingly good an interesting film. The creative disagreements can be clearly seen (if there is something the film lacks it’s a solid vision), but paradoxically, that may have contributed to an untraditional narrative outcome. World War Z is basically three stories in one linked by the protagonist, and though they are connected, they are also very different in many aspects. The beginning is similar to Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead (the zombie apocalypse begins, the protagonists try get to safety), the middle part is an action-packed search for the origin of the virus, and the last part is a more intimate laboratory horror story. I had some problems with the middle part, though it does have several excellent set pieces, the search for clues as a whole felt very random and haphazard. By the way, the editor must have gone totally bonkers, in some of the action scenes you can’t see anything, and every shot that was at least a little longer was a joy. Thanks God for that quiet, intimate ending. 75 %. PS: If you want to know what the original ending of the film was like, read this article. I think that in this case it’s pointless to blast Lindelof’s rewrite. The version we saw in cinemas is a lot happier than the dark original ending, but even as a horror fan I don’t think that “dark” always equals “better”. That said, I’d love to watch the battle of Moscow, hopefully the studio will release it, at least in BluRay, they filmed it already.
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A mixture of many incongruous interpretations and approaches to the zombie apocalypse theme. No surprise then that it couldn’t make a single coherent unit if it tried. But surprisingly, each one of these approaches is handled well in itself and so as the sum of many separate subsets it actually works; outstandingly so in the second half Jerusalem→ airplane→ Wales. Too bad about rating worries and so the lack of a darker tone and more gore in the final part. In the scenes where Pitt sinks his crowbar into a zombie’s head, not even Angelina would want to see a close-up of Brad’s face; whenever a drop of blood “threatens", the camera quickly pans up to Pitt’s tortured face. And considering how many times this happens, it’s almost ridiculous. Anyhow, I’m intrigued to see the potential director’s cut, because if I understand correctly, Forster had a vision, Pitt from his position of producer had a completely different one and, in the end, in the spirit of “the strongest dog gets to fuck", the studio slipped in its own version?
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According to Max Brooks, World War Z became more serious after the experiences of the past years. It used to be just a different, smarter zombie movie with Brad Pitt produced by his company Plan B. The main asset was Pitt's classic hero, the ultimate likable guy, who looks good no matter what, and of course, it's him and no one else who can save humanity... with his cuteness. Today, the sight of a global pandemic is somewhat more chilling.
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Urgent, intense, with a slight intellectual touch. The finale is predictable around halfway through, but it does not diminish its dramatic and impressive quality in any way. It is technically brilliant and very fast-paced. This is the style that I have liked about Forster since Quantum of Solace, one that many condemn. I feel like it is slightly out of sync with today's time and many people can't digest it, but I perceive it as a very progressive aspect of his directing. Minimalistic in terms of acting and visuals, with minimal (depressive and gloomy) music, exceptionally raw and “realistic”, World War Z has an excellent feeling to it. The zombies are unbelievably believable and also one of the few that are taken seriously.
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Gallery (422)
Photo © Paramount Pictures / Jaap Buitendijk
![World War Z - Photos](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/162/442/162442609_1818ee.jpg)
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