World War Z (2013) 1 PUBIC HAIR
Dir. Marc Forster
Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz
Review By Greg Klymkiw
Broken Record Alert: Yup, I'll cut to the chase. You've heard my complaints on the following failings in modern genre films before and, damn it, you're going to hear them again whether you like them or not. Before I do, allow me to proclaim the following:
World War Z is the worst zombie movie ever made.
Amongst a litany of complaints, the worst I can level is that it's so visually inept, they might well have secured the directorial services of Blind Pew.
Once again, a gargantuan budget has been afforded to a filmmaker (I'm using this term loosely here) who has absolutely NO TALENT for directing suspense and action. Marc Forster is the director who delivered Halle Berry her token Oscar win in the dreary Monster's Ball, puked up the lame pseudo-Masterpiece-Theatre-styled J.M. Barrie biopic Finding Neverland, crapped out the non-thrilling thriller Stay and performed a miraculous sleepwalk whilst directing the mediocre (but could have been a great picture if a real director had been at the helm) The Kite Runner.
All of these movies had varying degrees of critical and/or awards success as well as a veneer of dull respectability that idiotically convinced the James Bond producers to hire Forster for the wretched followup to the terrific Daniel Craig reboot picture Casino Royale. Quantum of Solace, was not only a dour downer, but featured the worst action set pieces in any James Bond movie ever made (and was only matched by the recent Sam Mendes blood-flecked turd Skyfall). The talentless Forster followed his Bond abortion up with the brutal, stupid pseudo-arty action item Machine Gun Preacher.
World War Z stars Brad Pitt as a former United Nations undercover operative who is forced back into the line of duty when a virus quickly transforms most of the world's population into zombies. He's not really doing it for the good of his country, the world or humanity, but for his family. Ugh! Cue the violins. He's a sensitive man.
He's given a team of Navy Seals and he trots the globe in search of a cure. Lo and behold, he discovers it buried within a semi-operational World Health Organization (WHO) compound in Cardiff, UK. After about 80 painful minutes of poorly directed, c-g heavy zombie attacks, the picture plops itself down for the rest of the almost-two-hour running time and forces us to watch a long, drawn-out and horrendously dull sequence where Pitt extracts the cure.
The screenplay, based on a novel by Max Brooks (a prolific comedy writer for SNL) and purportedly adapted by four writers (if one wishes to call them that), is bereft of any genuine originality, characters and worst of all, saddled with a bare bones plot with no shades or layering. I will always be the first person in the world to forgive a mediocre script in a genre picture IF the direction delivers first-rate thrills, chills and visuals with something resembling a voice. Zack Snyder's unrated director's cut of his Dawn of the Dead remake is a perfect example of a mediocre screenplay thoroughly enlivened on a visceral level by his visual gifts.
World War Z is virtually a non-screenplay. Pitt and his revolting family are strictly types, the military officials are all stock and the only characters with a few shards of interesting elements (a Spanish family they take refuge with, a female Israeli soldier who actually survives a zombie attack and an Israeli official in charge of the operations in his walled city), are all given short-shrift to the empty vessel that is Pitt's character.
And now we get to the worst of the worst - the suspense and action. All of the action setpieces are directed in the seemingly fashionable multi-camera closeups, virtually no mediums or wides, herky jerky movement, sloppy compositions and ADHD cutting. The few extreme wide shots - the ones that take place in Israel especially - seem CGI'd within an inch of their lives and because we never really connect with any of the characters when zombies are storming over the walls (nor do we ever get any decent shots of the zombies themselves), it's pretty much all for nothing. When the script locks us and the characters within the British WHO enclave the opportunities for genuine suspense within a claustrophobic situation are there, but Forster is too ham-fisted as a director to make any of it count.
The most egregious example of horrendous direction occurs in a sequence set in a full airplane in flight when a zombie attack occurs. Great idea, but even Snakes On A Plane was generally better-directed than the messy beats of herky-jerky vomit puddles created by the woefully gum-eyed Forster.
The movie is a major snore. It's cacophonous, boringly relentless, bereft of any sense of spatial geography and NEVER scary or suspenseful. Even more stupidly is just how bloodless the picture is - literally. I'm not saying we needed gore-galore, but part of the contemporary zombie ethos is the cannibalism and head trauma to stop zombies - and what little we get has no impact - mostly because of the aforementioned incompetence, but partially because the studio clearly wanted to generate a PG-13 experience.
Idiots! It's a zombie picture! And you know what, I've seen some bad zombie pictures in my time, but none of the looked so uselessly expensive and delivered virtually no bang for the buck. I'm the last person to trash a big budget, but I'm happy to do so when it's wasted on such pathetically manufactured piles of dung like World War Z.
I can only reiterate that it is, without a doubt, the worst zombie picture of all time.
"World War Z" is in massive worldwide release via Paramount Pictures.
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