Director: Marc Forster
Talent: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, Peter Capaldi,
Release Date: 21st June 2013
The film adaptation of Max Brook’s World War Z novel has been a long time coming… The subject of much speculation and tall Tinsel Town tales emerges from movie development hell as the most boring James Bond film ever made. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, The Greatest Investigator The UN Ever Had, But He Gave That Shit Up A Long Time Ago: now retired, Mr. Lane spends his days cooking pancakes, packing lunches and dropping his kids to school. Nothing lasts forever and Gerry’s new life as The Greatest Live-In Husband The World Has Ever Known is quickly interrupted by the outbreak of a deadly pandemic that turns regular fleshy people into computer generated zombies.
Luckily for Gerry, he can apply the mundane skills he acquired in the domestic sphere to the zombie menace. You’ll watch in bemusement as Brad Pitt looks at things, chews gum and struggles to operate a mobile phone. The film struggles in many respects, primarily with its action sequences. One can easily detect the craftsmanship of Marc Forster (who also directed the second most boring Bond film) in these consistently boring and overlong chase scenes. Tension is diminished by the film’s pin-point focus on Pitt’s character: it’s impossible for him to die, after all, he’s The Greatest Investigator The UN Ever Had.
WWZ’s zombies are of that new breed of fast zombie, meaning that their screentime is usually reduced to snatch-and-grab shots of flailing limbs and stomping feet. Not so scary and all too tired. Furthermore, the zombies aren’t all that threatening in the first place, boasting no novel characteristics, save for a penchant for hurling themselves off of buildings, which comes off as comedic rather than threatening, the latter of which one presumes is the desired effect.
The main thrust of the film sees Gerry travelling from one country to another in search of a cure. His task eventually takes him to Wales (!) where he discovers that zombies don’t like the taste of people with diseases. A plan is hatched to inject the world’s military forces with deadly diseases thus allowing them to dispatch the zombies without any trouble. The music swells, the World War is coming and then… credits.
WWZ shuffles about for two hours, building towards something that turns out to be nothing. Its opening title sequence full of international news coverage of the zombie outbreak promises a world of conflict, strife and possibility, but instead, the film chooses to focus on a story that is in terms of its thrills equivalent to Gerry Lane heading to the shops to buy some milk.
