I want Brad Pitt by my side should I ever come face to face with the end.
After months and months of less than desirable build-up in the press, World War Z is here at last (both Entertainment Weekly and Vanity Fair have chronicled the movie’s production woes – GTS if ya like), and Pitt finally has a potential franchise on which he can hang his hat.
And, you know what? I likey.
The movie, unlike the 2006 Max (son of Mel) Brooks book upon which it’s based, is a pretty straightforward summer blockbuster affair directed by Marc Forster with an elegance rarely found in such a production. For a zombie apocalypse piece, there is remarkable strive for character realization. Which is an interesting, kismet-y quality for a movie to have, especially when said movie’s entire long, pricey coming to be reeked of trying too hard: its star, its director, the people cutting the checks, they all wanted to get different things out of it.
All this to say whatever went on behind the scenes translated into a hella good time on the screen.
Phew!
Pitt, of course, is at the center of the movie.
To which, again I say: Kinda unbelievable that is his first huge starring property, huh (Troy doesn’t count, for that little nugget was obviously never gonna spawn a sequel, whereas thiswas is hoped to become a trilogy).
As Gerry Lane, a former UN investigator, the actor provides a personal POV that I understand is absent in Brooks’ book, which has numerous protagonists and covers a much grander geopolitical gamut. Now, I’m...not quite certain that the particulars of Gerry’s job were ever shared, but it ultimately doesn’t matter because Forster, working from a final script by Matthew Michael Carnahan (State of Play) and colleagues-from-Lost Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof, doesn’t just tell us but he shows us that the guy knows his s---.
So World War Z, the movie, is much more family man thrown into chaos, must save loved ones and humankind in the process.
There is no delving into conspiracy of who – which governments – knew about the pandemic as there is in the book. Of Gerry we know that he’s married (Mireille Enos from AMC’s The Killing plays his wife) with two young daughters and also that he is a good, resourceful man who will leave them to save them, to travel around the globe, from Philadelphia, where he lives, to South Korea to try and identify Patient Zero to Israel to look for more answers and finally to Wales to put to good use everything he’s learned along the way.
Information in World War Z is dangled like a carrot, and, while we don’t get the stick, most of the time we also don’t get the carrot. Not in the conventional sense, anyway.
Like Gerry, we gotta keep moving, and it works because I don’t suppose that in his situation we would pause to digest everything, you know what I mean. Forster allows certain things to sit, to simmer (Marco Beltrami’s music is pretty darn awesome), which creates an effective and thrilling suspense. This isn’t The Walking Dead – there’s no Pitt going around killing zombies because the summer movie season calls for a high body count.
To which, again I say: Kinda unbelievable that is his first huge starring property, huh (Troy doesn’t count, for that little nugget was obviously never gonna spawn a sequel, whereas this
As Gerry Lane, a former UN investigator, the actor provides a personal POV that I understand is absent in Brooks’ book, which has numerous protagonists and covers a much grander geopolitical gamut. Now, I’m...not quite certain that the particulars of Gerry’s job were ever shared, but it ultimately doesn’t matter because Forster, working from a final script by Matthew Michael Carnahan (State of Play) and colleagues-from-Lost Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof, doesn’t just tell us but he shows us that the guy knows his s---.
So World War Z, the movie, is much more family man thrown into chaos, must save loved ones and humankind in the process.
There is no delving into conspiracy of who – which governments – knew about the pandemic as there is in the book. Of Gerry we know that he’s married (Mireille Enos from AMC’s The Killing plays his wife) with two young daughters and also that he is a good, resourceful man who will leave them to save them, to travel around the globe, from Philadelphia, where he lives, to South Korea to try and identify Patient Zero to Israel to look for more answers and finally to Wales to put to good use everything he’s learned along the way.
Information in World War Z is dangled like a carrot, and, while we don’t get the stick, most of the time we also don’t get the carrot. Not in the conventional sense, anyway.
Like Gerry, we gotta keep moving, and it works because I don’t suppose that in his situation we would pause to digest everything, you know what I mean. Forster allows certain things to sit, to simmer (Marco Beltrami’s music is pretty darn awesome), which creates an effective and thrilling suspense. This isn’t The Walking Dead – there’s no Pitt going around killing zombies because the summer movie season calls for a high body count.
I chuck this to the rewrites the movie endured and, yes, earned. In getting to its opening date the movie dramatically lost and/or changed many plot points, which is why you will see but not visit with Matthew Fox, for instance. His arc was meant to color Gerry’s motivation for getting back home at some point. Again: GTS.
I mean, the movie’s climax was supposed to be much, much different, so by trying real hard to ground the story but still give us plenty o’ excitement, I think the filmmakers lucked into a very fun product that had better tie up a few loose ends should Gerry Lane come back for another adventure.
I wouldn’t mind him one bit.
My Rating ***1/2
I mean, the movie’s climax was supposed to be much, much different, so by trying real hard to ground the story but still give us plenty o’ excitement, I think the filmmakers lucked into a very fun product that had better tie up a few loose ends should Gerry Lane come back for another adventure.
I wouldn’t mind him one bit.
My Rating ***1/2
Photo: Paramount Pictures.
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