Topic: WORLD WAR Z review by Dorkman
Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book Outliers popularized the notion that it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to master a given skill. If this is indeed the case, I think I may be approaching mastery of whatever skills “Shitting on the World War Z adaptation” entails.
Based on the novel by Max Brooks, the film’s production was infamously fraught with problems, including millions of dollars of unaccounted overages and a last-minute Hail Mary reshoot of the entire third act.
To me, everything I heard about the adaptation sounded wrongheaded, and I said so anytime the topic came up. What I and many others felt should have been something like a documentary-style HBO series looking back at humanity’s near extinction — think Ken Burns or Band of Brothers, but with zombies, as would befit the book’s story and style — was instead going to be simply another story of one man trying to survive the onset of the apocalypse. In other words, the same movie we’ve already seen — practically the only movie we’ve seen lately — albeit on a grander scale.
But knowing that in advance and having the time to come to terms with it could be a blessing in disguise. The WORLD WAR Z movie is not the World War Z book. Okay. Fine. We’ll set that aside and treat it as though it’s called something else. As a movie, is it any good?
I’m as surprised as anyone else to find myself saying: yeah, actually — it is. While it may indeed be the same movie we’ve seen writ large, that turns out to be a pretty badass thing to see. Although Marc Forster’s action sensibilities have improved only marginally since the nigh-unwatchable QUANTUM OF SOLACE, I can write it off (with a shrug and a heavy sigh) by noting that WWZ is not ostensibly an action film the way a Bond film is, and/or that the swarming undead hordes are meant to be disorienting and chaotic. Whatever. It’s not very good but it’s not bad enough to ruin the movie, and keeps the story moving.
If anything, the story may move too fast. Brad Pitt’s globetrotting protagonist Gerry Lane seems to arrive in every new location with just enough time to get necessary plot information before things go tits-up and we’re treated to another camera-spazzing “narrow escape” sequence. The story takes surprising twists and turns, throwing up obstacles for Lane which I did not expect, making the movie pleasantly unpredictable and non-formulaic; and the few moments in which character development occurs are well-done (the movie got me on board early on with a brief but loaded scene of Pitt on the edge of a rooftop). But most of the movie leaves very little time for these moments to occur.
Even with its not-the-book storyline, the events of the film would have been better served as a TV series, so Lane could arrive in a location, make friends, see the different responses of different cultures to the zombie plague. Supporting characters are introduced and dispatched too quickly for us to become attached or feel much of anything other than breathless.
It seems the filmmakers realized this, as the movie finally gets a chance to slow down in the re-shot third act, in an extended sequence at the World Health Organization headquarters (suggested by Damon Lindelof and written by Drew Goddard). The film turns down the volume, takes the foot off the gas, and becomes a hold-your-breath suspense film — something we don’t see nearly enough of in this genre — bringing the movie into clear focus with a simple goal and an intimate showdown with a single zombie. Forster may not be to my taste for action, but I’d love to see more of this kind of filmmaking from him.
The film manages to end on a relatively satisfying note while still leaving itself open for further (already announced) installments. Optimistically, fans of the book can note that, while this film was not a faithful adaptation, it also did nothing to contradict the book. So we may yet get a chance to see some of the novel’s great moments brought to film.
And if not, if the burgeoning franchise continues along these lines — well, the book is still there on the shelf for me whenever I want it. If the rest are at least as entertaining as this one, I’ll be alright with that.
