Saturday, February 4, 2017

World War Z (2013)


IMDb plot summary: Former United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.
Directed by Marc Forster. Starring Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Daniella Kertesz, and James Badge Dale.

Once this film got going, I was pleasantly surprised, though chunks of it would work, I imagine, far better as a book than they do as a movie. The first hour is a sort of bureaucratic look at the politics of zombie invasion, but tackled in a very uninteresting way, and I found myself zoning out more than once. The film's second half is much more narrowly focused, and it pays off with an incredibly tense 20-minute heist-like sequence which had me much more intrigued. The scenes in which we see the zombies in action are indeed terrifying, and if it hadn't been bogged down with, well, I suppose, the "world war" part of the title in the first half of the movie, it could have been a really *great* zombie movie instead of just a good one.

3.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
World War Z > The Giver
World War Z > A Christmas Carol (1951)
World War Z < Kramer vs. Kramer
World War Z < In a Lonely Place
World War Z < We're No Angels (1955)
World War Z > To Kill a Mockingbird
World War Z < Mad Max: Fury Road
World War Z > Borat
World War Z < Marty
World War Z > Sling Blade
World War Z > Bandits

Final spot: #587 out of 2570.

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