Hey there folks better late than ever I guess for my thoughts on the new sci-fi thriller WORLD WAR Z starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster based on a novel by Max Brooks, the son of comedy God; Mel Brooks. The movie WWZ focuses on Brad Pitt's character who plays a former United Nations employee who like everybody else finds him and his family unexpectedly caught in the beginning or middle or however you want to look at it in the Zombie Apocalypse. Luckily for he and his family he is still on the UN emergency contact list. Pitt and the family, his wife(played by Mireille Enos), two daughters, and a kid they picked up along the way in all the chaos get rescued and taken to an aircraft carrier, which is a survivor fall out shelter. It's there that Pitt's character is faced with the ultimatum( because apparently he is the best at what he did when working for the UN) that he either help the government and military pinpoint how all this virus started and help find a cure or he and his family can leave the ship. So from there we follow the reluctant Pitt globe trot in search for answers and a cure while blood thirsty zombies are around every corner ready to literally pounce and bite at every turn.
Now when I first heard they were making this into a movie I was a little intrigued. Then it was announced that Brad Pitt was to star in the movie and I was a little taken back by that. Nothing against Brad Pitt, it's just that when when I think Zombie Apocalypse, Brad Pitt doesn't come to mind. Look there were a lot of things going against this movie for me the more I kept hearing about it from production problems, re-writes and release date holds and push backs. Then the trailer came out around November at it looked interesting with just some concern about the CGI Zombies and then to hear it was PG-13. It became a movie that I would eventually see but no big rush. Then the opening weekend came and I got a text, facebook comment and a phone call from my family telling me how good the movie was. So I guess I had no choice but to just go with the hype. So what did I think about a PG-13 Zombie film with Brad Pitt?..Well they fucking pulled it off. To where I dare say that THIS IS THE MOVIE OF THE SUMMER. I said that with Man of Steel and nothing against Superman, but WWZ is just a little bit better. Of course this movie is awesome. But it just catches you by surprise just by how good is to where you have to stop and think about what it was you just saw and how well it was pulled off. It's a zombie film, but not a horror film, because this movie has not really any gore really at all that you would get in any other film in the genre of Zombie films, but yet the sheer terror of a Zombie film is definitely there. You get an eerie vibe right from the jump with the opening credits with the news reports with the films score (which was brilliantly done by or with collaboration by MUSE) and then within minuets Pitt and the family are sitting in traffic and then BAM!! The shit hits the fan and all hell breaks loose and it doesn't let up at all. There doesn't seem to be a dull moment in this movie. It has you at the edge of your seat at all times and just doesn't let up at all having you wonder what's going to happen next.
Marc Forster, who previously gave us films such as Monster's Ball and Quantum of Solace(probably the worst Bond movie, but it did introduce us to Olga Kurylenko so I guess that's not a bad thing is it?), did an amazing job with the direction of this movie and his version of Max Brooks' version of the Zombie Apocalypse. To be honest I haven't read the book. Not sure if I will. I've heard it's different but what you see on screen works on every level. The action scenes were fucking awesome. Like the first attack scene and in the stuff in Jerusalem and that's just to name a couple. I don't want to give it all away. As for the Zombies some was live action and some was CGI and there were heavy CGI scenes but really that's the only way it would work and it did work. I mean you can't do a zombie anthill without CGI. These were the fast Zombies too like the ones from 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder's 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake(which is one of my favorite horror movies and if not one of the best remakes ever dare I say). There were some different things about these Zombies though. Sometimes they seemed almost feral and would pounce on their prey and even do Jeff Hardy swanton dives to catch people and it seemed that some of the noises they made reminded me of the sounds the Velociraptors made in Jurassic Park. You got to see the Zombie transformation as well. They had a twitch to them. One scene the people were watching a Zombie from a surveillance camera and I swear the Zombie looked like it was about to poplock or breakdance by the way it was twitching. Afrika Bambatta's "Searching for the Perfect Beat" would have been a great song to have in the background. Oh and the one thing that was cool was that they actually acknowledged the Zombies as Zombies. You don't really get that in most Zombie films or television shows. Maybe they did in Return of the Living Dead. Not sure.
Brad Pitt does a pretty damn good job in this movie. It's pretty much him throughout most of this. There are others he meets along the way in his travels including a military security guard played by Daniella Kertesz and a notable performance by David Morse as an American turncoat in a military prison. A lot of it is him making contact with his wife and I did like the dynamic between Pitt and Mireille Enos. They seemed like a convincing couple along with the two kids. Nice family dynamic. I mean when one of the daughters drops a stuffed animal on the street during a Zombie Apocalypse Brad Pitt is there as a devoted Dad and goes back and gets it, but pay attention that scene is pretty important. Other than his wife he also has contact with his UN buddy played by Fana Mokoena. Like I said Pitt does a great job carrying this movie. I heard Leonardo DiCaprio was up for this part and nothing against Leo, he's an amazing actor, but I don't think he could have pulled this off.
There supposedly was an alternate ending to this, but I like the direction they went with. The only bad thing I can really say about this isn't really bad. It's just there is a montage and epilogue that almost feels out of place. Almost. It doesn't kill the movie at all. Just an honest nitpick. Like I said WORLD WAR Z is an awesome movie and definitely worth seeing in the theater. Definitely well worth a full price BUT in 2D. Save you some money on 2D. There's no need to see this in 3D. So there you go folks my thoughts on WORLD WAR Z. Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the movie as much as I did and I will leave on something a dear friend Andy Hewitt once told me,"Zombie movies are like pizza. No matter how bad it is you are almost always satisfied" Except for Warm Bodies. That movie sucked.
Until next time folks
-JP
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