PG-13, 116 minutes
The best movie review I saw of “World War Z” was actually a Venn diagram by The Oatmeal, one of the sharpest webcomics around. In the area between the overlapping circles that showed everything the book and the film had in common, it simply read: “It’s titled World War Z.”
Hilarious and true. Because if you go into this big-budget horror/disaster thinking it bears anything more than a passing resemblance to the novel by Max Brooks, you’re bound to come away disappointed.
Which isn’t to say the movie they did make is terrible. It’s merely OK, with a few highly engaging action sequences interspersed with stuff that is loopy and/or dull.
Good, bad or indifferent, it’s just not the book.
While Brooks opted for a journalistic approach following a broad cast of characters, director Marc Forster and his trio of screenwriters went with a standard leading man story. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator picked to lead a team tracking down the source of the plague rapidly turning the world’s population into a swarm of zombies.
Personally, I would love to see a faithful adaption of “World War Z” – as soon as Hollywood gets around to making it.
Movie: C+