Nerd Movie Reviews

World War Z 3D Review

World War B+.

This film was fun and exciting.  It had some great moments and some really awesome scenes.  The problem is all the great scenes I have already seen about 100 times in trailers, and the movie shifted gears from a zombie film to an action film and back again with alarming rapidity.

This is one of the films that is going to suffer from my jaded senses, rubbed raw by having seen too many films over the last few years.  Had I seen this movie five years ago I would have enjoyed the hell out of it and headed home to play Left 4 Dead.  Now, having seen way too many films I can’t help but find issues with the film.

I love zombies and zombie films (Keep Calm and Kill Zombies image courtesy of my personal collection of zombie t shirts).  However, this gives me the right (at least as far as I am concerned) to be very critical and discriminating about zombie films and what makes them good.  It is not enough to have zombies in it.  In all great zombie films (or shows.  The Walking Dead definitely qualifies) the zombies are more a natural force, like a flood or earthquake, and the real story is of the struggle to survive.  Often times (thank you George Romero) the real enemy is the other human survivors as they try to take the limited resources away by force.

This film started out that way with Brad Pitt struggling to keep his wife and daughters alive but after ten minutes of that the writers got bored and opted to turn this into a Resident Evil-esque action film, only without the skin tight leather outfit.  I mentioned Left 4 Dead before and that is apropos as this film was a lot like watching someone play that game, even to the point of the protagonist surviving a plane crash.

Before I get any further I’d like to mention a few other zombie related things that this movie reminded me of.  First of all: fast zombies.  In order to have the ant hill attack scenes they needed to make the zombies fast, but I happen to know that Max Brooks (the author of this book) writes slow zombies.  Slow zombies are far more menacing and creepy.  Fast zombies could easily be replaced by fast alien bugs and it would not change the film much.  Honestly, what is the difference between fast zombies and an angry mob trying to run you down?  (For those of us who have experienced angry mobs in the past, of course)  Slow zombies are like the inevitable slow tide of fate and are therefore that much more terrible.

Fast zombies, however, also help patch up another hole in not just in this movie but in the whole zombie infection thing.  You see, humans biting other humans as a disease vector is not exactly going to move across the world at lightning speed.  Sure, it might catch the first few people off guard but eventually a few cops are going to line up and just shoot them down.  If a police officer can carry 100 bullets and use them to kill 5+ zombies before turning into one himself the ratio just doesn’t work out.  If all else fails a few fuel/air airstrikes will kill zombies by the acre.  Fast zombies make up for the fact that a decently prepared platoon of soldiers should be able to take out any number of slow zombies (it doesn’t really address the problem of a couple of tanks or APCs should be able to reap any type down by the thousands, but whatever).

The other problem I had with this film was the pacing seemed odd.  The book was a collection of stories spanning ten years.  In this movie the film goes from a weird newscast to the entire world going zombie in literally one night.  I just can’t believe it’s possible one bite at a time.  They talk about how big cities fell first due to the airports but it is established that one zombie on a plane will pretty much kill the entire passenger compliment in about five minutes.  How does this work exactly?  I am pretty sure a zombiefied pilot might have some issues landing a plane, and if the pilots are safe in the flight compartment they just might tell the airport to maybe not be too quick to open the cabin doors.  It’s possible there was a zombie incubation period for the first few (hundred thousand) victims but the movie never did anything to establish that.  In fact they talk about it starting in India and spreading worldwide, and they also establish that the longest a bite takes to turn someone into a zombie is ten minutes, so how does that translate into world wide pandemic?  I would totally buy into some attempt at an explanation but they never even bothered, which ended up feeling lazy.

That being said, the movie is fun if you can look past those issues.  Brad Pitt is good, and the zombies get looking zombie-ish by the end.  The story starts off with Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt-Fight Club, Inglorius Basterds, 12 Monkeys) living the suburban dream with his wife (Mireille Enos-Gangster Squad, Someone Like You, the Killing) and two daughters (Abigail Hargrove and Sterling Jerins).  Apparently he used to do some black ops style business for the UN or something.  He packs up his family and drives into the city.

Naturally the city is overrun by zombies in like three minutes and they have to hide out in an apartment.  Gerry calls his old buddy the Undersecretary of the United Nations (must be nice to have powerful friends) who sends a helicopter to rescue them.  They taken to a ship where it turns out the combined forces of the world have organized in like 24 hours but are still losing to the zombies.  Not enough bullets, I guess.  There is a scientist who is acknowledged as the last great hope to find a cure so obviously the thing to do is send him out into the world with like four military guys and Gerry for protection.  They are going to go to Korea where a report using the word “zombie” originated.

They land in the rain and dark, only to find it more or less abandoned.  The most valuable scientist in the world accidentally shoots himself in the head.  Gerry hooks up with some military guys who are holding on barely and learns from a crazy guy that Israel is where the action is.  They refuel their plane in like 30 seconds (no joke.  It takes me like 5 minutes just to refill my car) and off they go.  In Israel they discover the entire country is fortified but the fortifications fall in like five minutes (it seems the producers of this film feel like watches are for amateurs).  Gerry heads off to Cardiff as he thinks he has found a secret zombie weakness (aside from bullets in the brain.  I won’t reveal what the secret is but it is as lame as possible).  A zombie gets on the plane and they crash.  Gerry and his one handed Israeli friend (Daniella Kertesz-AfterDeath, Ha-Emet Ha’Eroma, Adumot) manage to stumble to the W.H.O. facility without any idea where they crashed or where the building was supposed to be (I guess they had been eating homing pigeons to survive).

At that point the movie literally becomes Resident Evil without the giant monsters.  They have to sneak through the lab in order to find the magic zombie MacGuffin.  At this point we actually see zombies, not just fast moving humans with some makeup.  The movie moves to a fairly tepid denouement.

The stars. 

Zombies.  One stars.  Zombies climbing all over each other to climb massive walls.  Two stars.  Some other really, really cool zombie action scenes.  Two stars.  I do like Brad Pitt.  One star.  There were a couple of scenes (early on and then again towards the end) that really felt like a true zombie film.  One star.  Overall a fun, exciting film.  Three stars.  Total: ten stars.

The black holes.

Fast zombies.  Sorry, but slow zombies just make for a more menacing movie.  One black hole.  The odd pacing and the rapidity of the plot progression.  It really felt like they tried to compress ten years worth of stories into one film (actually, that’s exactly what they did).  One black hole.  The whole “let’s send our best scientist out to be zombie chow” thing.  One black hole.  The MacGuffin they came up with was pretty damned dumb.  One black hole.  Total: four black holes.

So a total of six stars.  Good movie, worth seeing.  I just keep seeing ways it could have been better.  Do yourself a favor and see on the biggest screen you can find.  Some of the zombie attack visuals will really suck to watch on a small screen.  Date movie?  Only if she is a zombiephile (Necromantic!).  Otherwise this is a bros film all the way.  Bathroom break?  Pretty much anywhere they weren’t getting attacked by zombies will work.  Best bet would be when Gerry is trying to convince the Cardiff W.H.O. people who he is.  It’s towards the end.

Thanks for reading.  More to see this weekend so check back soon.  I might well be working on a couple of projects the rest of the weekend, however.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  Feel free to post comments on this film or my review here, and any off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected].  Have a great day.

Dave

 

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