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Gerry
Lane (Brad Pitt) is a family
man, with a wife (Mireille Enos) and two daughters (Abigail Hargrove
and
Sterling Jerins), who is thrown into an apocalypse where people are
being
turned into zombies. After he helps his family escape they are escorted
onto
the safety of a battleship.
It
is revealed that Gerry is a
former U.N. investigator and he is told that his family can only stay
onboard if
he helps to uncover the secrets surrounding this global disaster. Gerry
is
forced to travel through numerous countries littered with zombies,
including
Israel and South Korea. Will he be able to find the cure and reunite
with his
family?
If
only the film gave you a single
reason to care. Directed by Marc Forster (Quantum
of Solace, Finding Neverland),
this is a colossal disappointment for a movie that was once unlikely to
ever
see the light of day. Brad Pitt is a producer on the film as he bought
the film
rights of Max Brooks' apocalyptic novel ahead of Leonardo DiCaprio.
By
the time it's over you'll wonder
why he bothered. The film is rumoured to have had its budget ballooned
out to
nearly two-hundred million dollars, as well as speculation about
rewrites of
the ending and an ongoing feud between the film's main star and
director.
As
you watch the film it's not hard
to see many of these problems visible on the screen. To counter the
budget
blowout they've taken the easy option by diluting the film down into a
derivative
action movie. Brook's novel is a collection of faux U.N. reports,
outlining the
observations of a zombie apocalypse. The film has the very basic
framework of
the book in that its join the dots plot shifts Gerry from one continent
to another.
Yet
there is so little time spent on
establishing Gerry or his family that the movie is emotionally inert.
For all
of the holes in its science, Steven Spielberg's War of the
Worlds is a comparable and superior film. It spent more
time establishing the family dynamics and the characters so that the
action was
meaningful, tense and involving. The terrible reactions of the humans
were a lot
more interesting and damaging than the aliens themselves.
World
War Z
has scenes
of looting and post-9/11 images too but when we know so little about
the
central character and Pitt's performance is uncharacteristically dull,
it's
extremely difficult to care. The film is also terribly impatient. After
one
family scene together it bolts straight into action scene from the
trailer
where the cars are blocked and attacked in the street.
This
is one of many setpieces used
to substitute the humanity, characters and plotting. These big showy
moments
are all choreographed to the same rhythms and beats: Gerry enters a new
country, the next stage of the plot is explained and then the zombies
strike.
As
with Quantum, Forster believes that cutting as quickly
as possible makes
the film more intense. There are a few jumps but the film is murky,
bloodless
and at worst cartoonish. Where is the tension when Gerry can lob a
grenade
inside a plane, become impaled and still survive the subsequent
crash-landing?
The
only interesting setpiece is
towards the end of the film when Gerry starts using his surroundings
more by
relying on sound to avoid or call the zombies.
If
the film has any subtext at all,
it is the cornball message of the world finding its savior of mankind,
who is
simultaneously the preserver of American family values, fighting
against the
unknown and the outsiders. Largely though, it's an expensive computer
game
still waiting to be made, and a hurried, overproduced film that should
have
impressed considering the hype, talent and money behind it.
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