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WORLD WAR Z
Director: Marc Forster Cast: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, Fana Mokoena, James Badge Dale, Ludi Boeken, David Morse, Matthew Fox MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:56 Release Date: 6/21/13 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2013 Terror
is in short supply in World War Z, a
globe-trotting expedition from one zombie-infested place to the next, and it has
been replaced with spectacle. The
up-close-and-personal encounters we typically expect from movies
about the walking undead aren't here until the movie's final setpiece. Before that, we're presented with masses—people running through the
streets of Philadelphia as a pack of racing zombies attacks, resulting in more
and more creatures on their side, or zombies piling upon each other to form a
towering ladder of bodies in order to scale a giant wall that surrounds
Jerusalem. The
movie's scale is impressive. We're
accustomed to single locations serving as a representative for the larger
outbreak of the undead in movies on the subject. Here,
we see how widespread this zombie plague is firsthand. Soon after his first encounter with the monsters, the hero tells a family
determined to stay put that "Movement is life." The implication is that there's really no end to moving—no destination
that will mean salvation. We know
this because we see that devastation at every stop on the hero's world tour. There's something inherently hopeless about this scenario—unless
there's hope in a constant state of upheaval with the only uncertain promise
being that one might be alive at the end of a given day, hour, or minute. The
screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, and Damon Lindelof (based
on the book by Max Brooks) embraces that overriding sense of futility in ways
both big and small. Characters that
are seemingly important die soon after their first introduction. The protagonist's hunt for a cure is halted and diverted at every
turn. When the talk about the goal of quest starts in earnest, the conversation
is not exactly about a cure, either. Then,
of course, there are the setpieces, which put our hero—at once the unluckiest
(to get into these situations) and luckiest (to always get out of them) man in
the world—in increasingly impossible scenarios. He is Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), a retired envoy for the United Nations who
now spends all of his time with his family. On a seemingly ordinary day—save for the news reports about martial law
elsewhere in the world—he, his wife (Mireille Enos), and their two daughters
(Sterling Jerins and Abigail Hargrove) are stuck in a traffic jam in downtown
Philadelphia when the first tough situation occurs. The
first sequence sets up the formula for the rest of them—a relatively calm
situation (The relative part being the knowledge that zombies are going to have
to show up sooner or later) that slowly shows signs of something wrong and
unstoppably escalating to carnage. It
works quite well in this first instance, as director Marc Forster builds up the
unease with each new revelation. First,
there's the appearance of police motorcycles zooming between cars, and then
there's an explosion in the distance. When
the carnage begins, the sequence doesn't let up until the family has found
sanctuary in a building, and even then, well, it's only the briefest of respites.
These zombies are
everywhere. The
sequence also establishes a few rules, such as a countdown to a victim of a
zombie bite turning (eerily juxtaposed with a talking child's toy) and that
these monsters are of a singular mind to bite (They lunge headfirst at their
targeted victims with no regard for anything that might be in the way, which
borders on comic effect at times). That
first rule is essential to one scene. After
making a long trip to the roof of an apartment complex and encountering zombies
along the way, Gerry, knowing he's gotten some undead blood in his mouth,
immediately rushes to the edge of the rooftop—teetering there, counting, and
ready to step forward if he feels himself changing. It's
the defining moment for this character who's willing to sacrifice himself, lest
he bring any danger to his family. The
dedication is more important when the Under-Secretary-General of the UN (Fana
Mokoena), his old boss, tells Gerry that he must escort a doctor to find
"patient zero" or his family will be denied the security of a ship in
the Atlantic Ocean. Pitt's
performance is perhaps the most vital element of the movie, and he conveys a
Zenic aura of composure as chaos erupts around him. There's
plenty of it, too. A trip to an
airbase in South Korea provides a little information about the origin of the
pandemic and an opportunity for a stealth mission to refuel their cargo plane on
a rainy airfield, where there's no way to tell how many zombies there might be
and from where they might leap. The
Jerusalem sequence (started, in a bit of irony, by a display that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been forgiven by both sides) is followed by a
close-quarters encounter on an airplane with a ludicrous resolution (Pitt sells
the motivation behind the apparently suicidal act), and that's followed by a
trip through the narrow hallways of a medical research facility for an
anticlimactic resolution. Copyright © 2013 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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