World War Z is 2013's big summer blockbuster starring Brad Pitt. You know how it goes - in a big U.S. city, everything is fine until one day, an unknown infection spreads and turns people into maniacal biters. Gerry Lane (Pitt), a retired UN investigator, is asked to find the source of the disease and if possible, a way to thwart its spread. To do this, he has to leave his family behind and travel to various places on the globe.
Let's begin with what I liked about this movie, because there's not much. Zombie movies rely on the suspense, the fear that our main character might get injured, and there were some good intense scenes. The fact that the zombies weren't just dead creatures walking around (like in The Walking Dead) but actually aggressive, fast runners added to that. And of course, Brad Pitt is a convincing actor that fits into roles like these well (even if it is the generic Brad Pitt character).
Where to start... the plot. To put it simply, the story is boring and cliched. If you've read any article about this movie, you'll know that it went through countless rewrites by practically everyone in Hollywood. That's probably the reason why it's so bland and out-of-focus. Pretty much, this is the story: Gerry flies somewhere, shit goes wrong because, you know, something has to happen - he's the main character! Then he goes somewhere else, and guess what, shit goes wrong there too. The plot holes are pretty amazing as well. From beginning to end, it's filled with conveniences for the main character. Of course, in any movie, the main character will be luckier than everyone else and he/she will survive harsh, even seemingly-impossible circumstances. But there's a limit to that. There was a part of the movie when I just continuously shook my head. (I'll explain it in the spoiler-alerted section.)
To give you a feeling of the quality of the writing without spoiling anything important, here are some problems in the first 15 minutes. Gerry and his family are stuck in traffic and people in the streets are starting to panic and run. Then suddenly, a huge truck accelerates through the traffic jam, smashing everything in its way and killing a police officer who was right next to Gerry's car. The camera shows his two little girls in the car, and they're just - panting. Panting? Wouldn't they be screaming or crying if they just saw a person killed right next to them? This wouldn't bother me as much if in the next scene, the girl hadn't started screaming when they're driving fine on the road.
The truck that smashes through everything is driven by a zombie - but why would the zombie be pressing the accelerator? Every other zombie in the movie seemed to be chasing people. Just another way for our characters to escape the traffic jam. So they're driving along fine until an ambulance crashes into them. It seemed like a fatal accident (especially if they weren't wearing seat belts - oh wait, the girls weren't) - if not, then there at least should have been some major bleeding and broken bones. But no, Gerry and his family are perfectly fine. A kind citizen decides to abandon his perfectly fine RV with a gun inside, and our characters exit the chaos safely.
Hopefully, that gave you an idea of World War Z's quality. Now, as for the characters, there is absolutely no development or meaningful interactions between them. This movie primarily features Brad Pitt, and he's the usual bad-ass, smart, handsome man and nothing more. The fact that he has a wife and kids is supposed to makes us care for him more, but that connection is so weakly portrayed that he might as well be single. In fact, that would have been better.
To add one last remark in the spoiler-free section, the ending was incredibly anticlimactic and disappointing. The next part contains spoilers so just scroll down to view my rating if you haven't seen the movie yet.
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Analyzing the beginning wasn't enough for me because there are more important scenes that I have greater problems with. First, the plane scene. Gerry and his partner get on the plane, they're at high altitude, and of course, there's a zombie on the plane. Why would the zombie wait silently in the bathroom the entire takeoff, wait till they can't land, and then come out and attack? They obviously aren't that smart, judging from the entire of the movie. So the entire back of the plane gets infected and slowly Gerry realizes that at this rate, everyone's going to get infected. So he decides to blow up a hole in the plane with a grenade. What was he thinking? 'Since we're all gonna die, I'll just kill everyone instead!' So the plane crashes and (this is where I shook my head) of course, the only two survivors are Gerry and his partner. And the plane crashed at walking distance from where they were headed to anyways. How convenient.
The crux of the movie, the point where Gerry figures out the mystery behind the zombies, is scene where he observes a massive wave of zombies simply running past a child. He figures out, from that, that zombies ignore terminally ill people since they aren't healthy hosts to the virus. So say that was the case. But why would the zombies run past the kid? Shouldn't they simply trample over him since he's in the way? The wave was huge, and every zombie avoided him, as if they saw him through the crowd and consciously avoided him. Okay - even if the do avoid the sick, there should have been at least one zombie in that huge crowd that didn't see him and ran into him. If there was a concrete pillar in place of that kid, they would have ran into it - I mean, they seem to like bumping into walls and obstacles in any other scene. Anyways, my point is that that scene shouldn't have happened like it happened, which would have prevented (or at least delayed) Gerry from figuring out the key fact.
There, I'm done ranting about World War Z (although the ending does invite another paragraph or two). If you wanna watch a similar(?) apocalypse-type movie that actually does it right, watch District 9. There's a good movie for you.
6.0/10
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