**/****
starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox
screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Drew Goddard & Damon Lindelof, based on the novel by Max Brooks
directed by Marc Forster
by Walter Chaw Marc Forster’s World War Z, an adaptation of Max Brooks’s cause célèbre novel (think Stephen Ambrose on the zombie apocalypse) that had a production so troubled the real surprise is Terry Gilliam had nothing to do with it, lands as half an idea, handsomely mounted in a really expensive crater. With almost no relationship to the book beyond honouring its concept of a conflagration told in vignettes, it feels almost exactly like James L. Brooks’s I’ll Do Anything, which began life as a musical and ended up, after extensive reshoots and careening budget overages, song-free, yet whole somehow despite the trauma. That sense of a sudden change in direction, in genre, is all over World War Z–something in its almost apologetic reserve, something in its unmistakable indecision. Indeed, it serves as a fitting metaphor for a zombie as a corpse similarly brought to shambling half-life, but frankly, it could’ve been a lot worse. It works for what it is in the same way that Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion works, and with the same limitations, ambivalence, anticlimax, and handsome mounting. If, at the end, its Damon Lindelof-penned solution* (the twelfth-hour salvation of a freight train jumped its tracks) is as stupid as you would expect something Lindelof to pen, at least the journey there is interesting, even occasionally (if only very occasionally) arresting. A shame that Forster hasn’t gotten any better at directing action since Quantum of Solace.
Its first miscalculation probably the implementation of a central character, World War Z follows the globetrotting derring-do of former U.N. hotspot navigator Gerry Lane (is in my ears and in my heart) as he’s pulled back into action to suss out “patient zero” in the zombie pandemic. A family-man first, Gerry (Brad Pitt) escapes Philly, I mean Newark, I mean some hell-hole, finding sanctuary on an aircraft carrier where the best and brightest and the Declaration of Independence are secreted to wait out the early days of the blight. Gerry travels to Korea, then to walled Jerusalem where idiot wailers make too much noise. He takes a Belarusian jetliner in the picture’s coolest set-piece, then visits Wales, I think (Cardiff?), where Lindelof saves the day with a way to end the movie without a bazillion-dollar epic slaughter that we still get glimpses of in a hastily-edited, wearily-narrated epilogue. The film’s best idea is to present the zombies as insectile, clambering over one another in complete disregard of personal space. The worst idea is its attempt to give Gerry depth with a family in peril it promptly relegates to the sidelines before reintroducing at the end in what feels like every bit the equivocal band-aid that it is.
World War Z is bad, yet, miracle upon miracles, it’s not unforgivably bad. No, it’s serviceable fare more fatally wounded by the prevarication of making a zombie movie featuring millions upon millions of deaths (hundreds shown) within the chaste confines of the PG-13 rating. Without gore, without any coherently-shot action sequence that could have lent sense and scale (and, consequently, tension and pathos) to the proceedings, and without real characters to root for beyond broad sketches and Pitt’s generic man of action, all that’s left is a curiosity forever right on the edge of being a better movie. The standard for me in this vein remains Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s tragically under-seen 28 Weeks Later, the mere identification of which suggests that World War Z also has the misfortune of coming at the very end of a played-out thread–one peppered with a few too many masterpieces to compete against. Still, certain elements–such as Daniella Kertesz’s star-making turn as an Israeli soldier, that airplane sequence, Pitt’s undimmed star quality, or the emergence of Mireille Enos as someone to watch–provide World War Z with just enough meat to not entirely suck. It’s mediocre. Huzzah!
*SPOILER: The solution of the piece is that if humans inject themselves with a terminal disease, the zombies will avoid them because the zombie contagion desires a “healthy” host. Except–and one of the characters explains this as the reason infecting zombies with something else wouldn’t help–that being dead means you don’t have a functioning circulatory system. Which also means that unless the disease is neurological somehow and terribly advanced, it also shouldn’t matter whether the host has a terminal illness. return
Ugh, Lindelof was probably so proud of himself when he thought of that, too. Just spent all night staring at his computer screen until it hits him like a bolt of thunder.
“Eureka!” he says, while he’s writing, then can’t wait to rush out and explain it to his friends. He tells everyone, even the waiter at the restaurant — who doesn’t care — and every time the explanation is nestled in a bed of incomprehensible justifications.
“Don’t you get it?” He tells the waiter. “We always act like zombie movies are about death, but really they’re about life. The disease is a kind of LIFE, that’s why it can beat DEATH! Get it?”
Bingo of 28 Weeks Later. One of the best genre films of the 21st century. Thus far it looks like there is little chance of beating it with this.
FWIW, the book is pretty shitty, first draft-kind-of writing. I didn’t have high hopes for the film, and I’ll certainly be skipping it.
Furthermore, if you want to go to the other end of a large zombie infection writ small, I humbly recommend Pontypool (both the novel and the film) because it is its own kind of genius.
Anyone who’s seen The Killing already knows that Mireille Enos is one to watch. Unfortunately, that also means you’ve seen The Killing.
At least I’ll Do Anything (1994) had Albert Brooks, some good Hollywood satire, and Joely Richardson full-frontal sideways. This seems more like a zombified Town & Country (2001), with the audience wondering “Where did all the money go?” and “Why was this concept so highly-prized in the first place?” and “Was this scene from the original script, the on-set rewrites, or the post-preview reshoots?”
Agreed re: Kurt’s comment about the source novel. It was actually pretty lame, and in ways that go beyond the writing. I struggle with anything that paints organizations like the CIA and IDF as any kind of force for good–like even vs. zombies, that’s how cynical history has made me–and a lot of the political stuff in the book seemed drawn uncritically from some sort of centrist-received-wisdom reference guide. You know, American and Israeli governments good and competent, those of eastern Europe less-so, and China a truth-repressing breeding ground for pandemics (as true as that may be, we all know that industrialized food production is the real roulette we’re playing). Is it too much to ask for a genre movie to challenge at least some of this stuff?
Anyway, for my two cents, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One is the best zombie novel, followed by Matheson’s I Am Legend, which needs a restraining order against Hollywood. How about Zone One directed by Neill Blomkamp, starring Donald Glover? I’d kickstart that sh*t.
“I struggle with anything that paints organizations like the CIA and IDF as any kind of force for good”
There is no critic more tedious than one who demands that art reflect their personal politics.
Not as tedious as people who insist that the personal/political has no place in mass entertainment when in fact mass entertainment is filthy with it’s own brand of politics that reflect the personal politics of the makers of said mass entertainment. If you think aggrandizment of the CIA isn’t political then you are dumber than your comment makes you out to be.
If you want to judge movies on whether it matches your political beliefs, go join the rest of them over on Focus on the Family or any other Christian review site; you’ll fit right in. If you can’t handle something not matching your exact level of anti-Americanism (or pro-Americanism, or feminism or libertarianism or pro-animal-rights-ism or what-the-fuck-ever), just admit that you don’t actually want good movies, you just want propaganda for your side. (BTW, never said anything wasn’t or shouldn’t be political.)
(I’m Ron)
Wow. I was just going to post that Ron had a good point about expecting art to match your political beliefs, but then shit got real. Anyway, I actually agree, judging art for not getting in line with you is pointless. you should read the book and see for yourself. the politics in it is learner’s permit-level stuff. and for the record, propaganda for any side has a particular stink about it. thing is, the novel version of wwz is promoting a particular vision of politics that is very much coloured that way. it just happens that the colour matches our standard-issue filters, so it’s maybe not super obvious, although should be to anyone who’s paying attention. if critical thought is now personal politics to be left out of a discussion, what are we supposed to talk about? box office?
Walter’s a great essayist, but who knew he had a degree in advanced microbiology? Thus he debunks WWZ’s ending and saves us low-watt masses from interpreting it as it was intended, a lesson in finding creative solutions outside the box, or something like that. If only he protected us from the scientific incorrectness of so many other films: “Jurassic Park” (cloning dinosaurs through embalmed mosquitoes is preposterous), “Alien” (a mouth inside a mouth would choke it to death) and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” (Closing your eyes does not protect your head from being exploded, shriveled, or melted by pissed-off angels. OBVIOUSLY.)