So the same situation lies with World War Z the movie, and with exception to the name of the bestselling zombie novel it is based on, the film is predictably different from its literary origin. So how does the movie measure up as a stand-alone work?
Unlike the book, where the narrative is delivered in separate 'survivor's accounts', WWZ instead focuses on an ex-UN employee's desperate race to stop a zombie plague from annihilating existence. The protagonist, Gerry Lane, (Brad Pitt) has been yanked out of normality after the undead attacked Philadelphia, US, and his family barely escaping from the fallen city. Forced to employ his expertise for the greater cause, Lane made international flights to a few hotspots in an attempt to find answers to the mysterious outbreak.
WWZ strives for an action thriller or as director Marc Foster intends to see it, a movie that is part of "a trilogy that would have the grounded, gun-metal realism of ...(Matt) Damon's Jason Bourne series tethered to the unsettling end-times vibe of ..."The Walking Dead."
If that is so true but, meanwhile, the pretense of an intelligent story is just painfully glaring.
We see Gerry hitting a block in his investigative efforts. How did this happen? Where did it come from? In a South Korean-American military base scene, Gunter Haffner (David Morse), a rouge CIA agent, conveniently appears from nowhere, locked in a cell actually, then starts rambling about North Koreans and Israel's walled city, thereby giving Gerry the next clue and country to head to. Now that doesn't require much deduction.
If the lack of smarts wasn't the fatal bite on the jugular, the story's incoherence is WWZ's biggest blunder. Every major scenes only has one thing in common: Olympian-sprinting zombies. After that, these scenes are almost independent episodes of their own, with no real deal in overall plot development. What's assured is ample time dedicated towards the onslaught of the horde.
It should not be the one thing marked up for criticism, but unfortunately, the zombies of WWZ stinks, pun intended.
To have these creatures so far removed from George Romerorese undead is one thing but Forster took it to another level of farce . Now, it's not enough to have zombies running at breakneck pace a la 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's remade of Dawn Of The Dead. More superhuman than mere 'infecteds', they can even do parkour leaps across rooftops and congregate into an macabre tsunami of a gigantic human centipede, climbing over each other to scale a monolithic city wall in an Israel scene. What's missing is the power of flight.
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| World War What??: Prepare to see a spectacle of superhuman zombies. |
In addition, the heavy-handed CGI has robbed the undead of its more organic concept, and so overwhelmingly exploited that a close-up shot has a zombie awfully animated with twitchy movements. Real actors did actually came in, notably in the spiritless final act of the film. And there's that one particular zombie you would love to drive an axe into the head; the one who keeps baring an epileptic clattering of teeth.
Supporting characters in WWZ have little to contribute, if only to suffer a premature killed-off for most of them. Mireiile Enos, who played his wife, Karin, spend a better part of the second act onwards, waiting for his call. So does his former boss, Thierry (Fana Mokoena). Tagging along with Gerry is a tough Israeli GI Jane (Daniella Kertesz), while having not much to say, lets gun and blade do the talking.
That WWZ has been produced with a lesser-known supporting cast underscores it as a Brad Pitt movie. It makes him look good, churning out a intelligent, resourceful and courageous character in Gerry Lane. The protagonist occupies centrestage as he gathers information, put down a few undeads and saves the day. It makes sense that Pitt is, on intent, the action star of the flick just like Milla Jovovich in the Resident Evil series, albeit less extravagant.
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| Escape From The Dead: Brad Pitt (middle) as former UN investigator, Gerry Lane, who flew around the world to solve the zombie outbreak. Daniella Kertesz (left) tags along as a tough Israeli soldier. |
WWZ is somewhat lost from what it could have been. The film's post-production has been marred by the infamous re-writes and re-shoots, which threatened to overshadow its debut. A specific scene has to drop due to political overtones. There's also the apparent disagreement between Pitt and Forster over who-knows-what. How such combination of events would, or even, have damaged the adaptation is subjected to debate.
What's clear is that WWZ represents a significant loss of opportunity in creative story-crafting. If not shot page-by-page, the intriguing concepts of the novel would still be strong building blocks for a groundbreaking movie with far more an ambitious scope than what the final product is attempting to resemble. The book is an ingenious understanding of how a zombie apocalypse is able to alter the social-political structures of the world, but because Mr Pitt wants a summer blockbuster, WWZ the movie just falls apart from there.
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