World War Z (2013)

Though I was aware of the repeated criticism to World War Z for taking so many liberties with the book series by Max Brooks, and I was not particularly pleased with the heavy use of digital zombies that I saw in the trailers, I found World War Z an engaging and highly entertaining movie with great moments of cinematic suspense. Without the gore of previous zombie adventures like 28 Days Later and the like, WWZ shares with them the fast, kinetic zombies that are capable of physical feats that probably the undead were never able to do while being alive.

By the way, the plot is not one of the movie strengths and the film is quite able to mask this fact with an energetic pace and a variety of locations. The zombie craze starts abruptly and the commanding center of the fight against the zombies seems to be determined to get former UN officer Jerry Lane on a plane to find the origins of the zombie disease, but as soon as he gets in the plane, it seems that nobody cares anymore about his fate or his mission –except his wife. The movie of course follows Brad Pitt all along. From New Jersey to a US Navy ship and from there to an American military base in South Korea –a sequence filmed entirely in the dark and where we do not see one single Asian zombie—, then Israel and finally Wales. It is here that our hero, supported by the remaining science staff of a World Health Organization facility, is able to articulate and put into practice his theory about how to avoid zombie attacks.

But the plot of any film is not everything, and the action scenes play some unexpected, enjoyable cards only by involving a bit of suspense and psychological realism. It’s a welcome addition by Swiss director Marc Foster (he also directed The Kite Runner, Monster’s Ball and the failed Bond adventure Quantum of Solace), especially because the zombie gore had seemed to arrive to a point of no return. Maybe somebody got tired of this. Or maybe there is another, easier explanation: the genre was simply waiting to involve a consolidated star like Brad Pitt, a PG-13 rating and develop massive blockbuster ambitions.