World War Z - Film Review

[shadowkat]

[Decided to take today off, since we get election day off - for a four day weekend. Haven't done much due to the fact that I'm having digestive issues.]

Just finished watching World War Z starring Brad Pitt and directed by Pitt. And it's a surprisingly good movie. Sort of Contagion plus 28 Days with zombies. Also, it has to be the first time I've ever seen zombies on a 747 Plane at 2000 feet.

Rather enjoyed it. It was about solving the virus and finding a way of combating it and the zombies, as opposed to the horrible things people do to each other and/or five to six people trying to survive a zombie attack in a remote local, which let's face it has been done to death by now. After The Walking Dead and Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days, not to mention Resident Evil - there's not much else you can do with the whole "let's just kill as many zombies as possible and hope we'll survive" motif.

World War Z - goes a different route. For one thing, the hero is an EX-UN investigator, who worked in the most dangerous places in the world - investigating problems for the UN. He went into areas no one else did. He left his job to be with his family, wife and two daughters. The UN rescues them from Philadephia which becomes overrun by "zombies" and in return for protecting his family, Gerry (Brad Pitt) agrees to accompany a leading neruologist/pathologist in a hunt for the cause of the disease, in order to find a way of fighting it or curing it.

Pitt's character eventually becomes accompanied by a young female Isralie solider named Zeke (I think that's her name, didn't have close-captioning on). And she's a kick-ass character.
Although this is mainly an action/puzzle solving film not a character driven one - so we aren't told a lot about the characters. But all of them are well-acted, there's diversity in casting choices, and they are well-rounded. Also, no villains. Just people. The villain is the virus.

Like Contagion - it's never quite clear where the "rabid zombie" virus came from or what created it. The focus of the film is on finding a way to fight it.

The film held my attention, wasn't that gory or that scary. Normally I find these films hard to watch. I don't like gore and scare easily. So if you've watched "The Walking Dead", this won't bother you in the slightest. It does have startle moments though...that make you jump.
What was a welcome change - was little emphasis on gore or blood and guts. Normally zombie movies are incredibly gory.

It's fast paced. Performances are stellar. Dialogue is natural and on target. And it's rather fun in places - ie. The Zombies on the Plane.

Overall rating? A-

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

From what I read - the book was impossible to film without changing it.
Since it really doesn't have a central character or plot so much as is like reading a series of documentary news footage? Am I right?

This is more similar to the Andromeda Strain meets 28 Days. I found it to be better than expected.

No, I've never heard of Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane.
(Although maybe Brad Pitt did - because this scene felt like a shortened version - and it worked, well sort of. I admittedly thought - okay there's no way they survived THAT.)

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Since it really doesn't have a central character or plot so much as is like reading a series of documentary news footage? Am I right?

Yep. Which is why it would really have worked much better as a miniseries or the like. There are some really good stories in there, many of which don't focus on the squarejawed white hero, that'll go forever unfilmed now, I guess. Which isn't the worst fate, but...

No, I've never heard of Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane.

You haven't missed much. It's a B-movie take on Snakes On A Plane except with zombies and without Sam Jackson. Not remotely good, but kind of entertaining in how bad it is.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily. They've remade movies into mini-series before.
IF it's popular enough, someone will turn it into a tv series - hoping for another Walking Dead.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Sadly I doubt it'll happen.

Also, re: it being impossible to film - only a few years ago, Hollywood was going gaga over stories with lots of subplots set all over the world (Syriana, Babel, etc). This would have made a perfect horror version of that. But I guess not.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

But those movies didn't necessarily do very well..and felt scattered, which was why they aren't doing them now. One, Babel, Brad Pitt acted in and produced, and it was not well received.

It's VERY hard to do that type of story well in 90 minutes. Movies are the visual version of "short stories". Few people have pulled it off - and those that did had simpler concepts without weighty special effects - such as Robert Altman. (Nashville, Short Cuts, Godsford Park, MASH.)
But very few can do it.

The problem with seeing an adaptation of a book that you adore, is you want to see the book on screen. OR the adaptation you'd have created if you had the ability to do it.

I went in blind, had low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. As a result I was able to review the film on its merits and not on how good a job it did of reproducing the book on screen.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I agree that not all movies like that are successful (though the same could be said for any genre), though in Babel's defense, it did win a Golden Globe for best picture and had a bunch of Oscar nominations. So maybe not a complete failure. ;)

I agree that every adaptation needs to be an adaptation - ie you can't have the exact same story as the book, you have to cut some bits, add some bits, etc. But when you make an adaptation of a successful book that does something new with an old story, puts the focus on something other than the traditional hero role, looks at something more than just how this one person handles the situation, takes into account that the world is more than just the country it's produced in... and you cut everything except the actual title, then much like the possible future Buffy reboot, I reserve the right to call it a pity.

But maybe I should see it before I continue that argument. :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we're both in a similar position. I can't really say anything about the book - I haven't read it. So, have no clue to what degree the film followed it or what elements they took out of the book. Really, couldn't say if it is an adaptation or just a loosely based (ie. took the title and zip else, so not really an adaptation at all - which a lot of tv shows and movies have done.)

I can tell you this there's a montage at the beginning of various events leading up to it, then it zeroes in on specific story of Gerry. Now whether this was a story in the book or a combination of stories or merging of characters? I couldn't say.

I really just saw it as a really interesting and compelling zombie movie. (With the caveat, that I am not a fan of zombie movies or the zombie genre and find them difficult to watch and not that entertaining.) It's rare that I like a zombie movie. There's only a few that I enjoyed. But I watched it knowing literally nothing about the book other than the fact that it was about a zombie plague, difficult to film, and basically just various interviews of different people in different situations dealing with the plague across the world.

From the description and what I saw in the book stores flipping through it - the book appeared to be the book version of a news documentary - or told in that narrative style. (And since I'm not a fan of the fake documentary narrative style, I was rather relieved they chose not to try that approach. I know I'm in the minority on this - but I find tv shows that do it, films that do it, and books that do it - highly annoying. I get very frustrated with the style. But I'm also not a fan of non-fictional documentaries unless they are done by Ken Burns who seems to understand that watching a bunch of talking heads gets really boring after a while.)