Did anyone expect a zombie movie from the director who
brought you Stranger Than Fiction
(one of the best metafictional films) and Quantum
of Solace (one of the less inspiring Bond films in recent memory)? Maybe I expected a talkier film from Marc
Forster, especially because of the epistolary format of the eponymous Max
Brooks novel, but what I got was something more engaging – an entertaining
blockbuster-lite with some thrilling zombie set pieces.Brad Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, average joe with classified UN experience which comes in handy when teeming hordes of the undead take over Philadelphia – and, Gerry learns, most of the world. In exchange for his family’s safety, Gerry agrees to escort a leading physician in search of a cure, a harrowing search which will take Gerry around the world and face to face with speedy, deadly zombies.
Devotees of the Brooks book will likely find fault with the fact that the film streamlines the book’s narrative, eliminating most of the political commentary and torqueing the story toward a more action-based plot. (In fact, I suspect you could change the name of the film and those folks might like it better.) While I miss the governmental satire Brooks brought to the genre, portraying political leaders as bumbling naysayers until it’s too late, I found the book a bit repetitive, duplication which the film eliminates by focusing on Gerry Lane and not his interviewees.
This change allows Forster to focus more on in-the-moment experiences of the zombie apocalypse rather than reflect nostalgically on the experience. While the latter has its advantages in a literary form, it’s hard to imagine that being a compelling film (perhaps as a mockumentarian experiment?). Instead, Forster drops us in on the day of the zombie disaster, literally in the middle of a traffic jam with only pancakes to prepare us. Granted, this comes at the expense of character development; we don’t know much about what makes Gerry or anyone else in the film tick beyond basic survival. Conversely, the film mercifully avoids padding out the cast with stock survivor characters (see Shaun of the Dead for a gleeful vivisection of these tropes) by following Gerry.
It’s likely Pitt’s star power that elicits the audience’s sympathies more so than the strength of the script, but Forster makes up for the script’s shortcomings (with Brooks, five writers – too many cooks?) by prizing spectacle over protagonist. By staging a series of progressively more intricate and more terrifying zombie confrontations (I counted seven), Forster creates a deeply personal involvement with the audience, who can’t help but hold their breath once it becomes apparent that zombies react to sound. Simultaneously, the shifting setting creates a global feel for a genre that too often has been bogged down by the stale locked-room plot (cf. Mulberry Street done wrong, Dawn of the Dead done right).
Want zombies in the metropolis? Sure, you’ve seen it before, but rarely with the terror-of-the-unseen rendered here. Zombies on a plane? (Where’s Sam Jackson when you need him?) WWZ’s got those, too. And if you liked those two, Forster outdoes himself with the film’s final big zombie scene, which collects all the bits the film introduces to the mythology and throws them together into a tense sequence requiring silence and sharp reflexes – almost like a video game level but without the passivity that often plagues such moments. Here especially, Forster knows when to go for the jugular and when to pause for a moment of levity (thank God for Pepsi, that’s all I’ll say).
Taken holistically, World War Z isn’t the “complete package” that zombie aficionados might expect from the genre, but what WWZ lacks in innovation it atones for with execution. With those house lights dimmed and nothing between moviegoers and the screen, the bumps in the dark create an effective cinematic experience that ends up being more fun than I expected.
No comments:
Post a Comment