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Health & Fitness

'World War Z' Lacks Bite

It may seem strange that I'm disappointed that “World War Z” was all about zombies, but hear me out. The problem is not that it differs from the source material. Anyone remotely familiar with it knows that the movie would have to be different by necessity, seeing as how the book takes place ten years after The Zombie War and is crammed with so much information and people that it could easily be its own miniseries.

But the book isn't really about zombies. They're really just an interesting way to get everyone's attention. What the book actually offers is a scathing indictment of a global order that could very plausibly almost allow humanity to become extinct for the simple reason that it was much happier exploiting the people it was supposed to protect.

But the film actually does do a few things very well. It starts out somewhere other than New York City, for one, in Philadelphia, where an ex-United Nations employee and Everyman hero named Gerry (Brad Pitt) lives with his wife and two daughters. They see hints of something happening on the news, but really it's just in the background of their lives, bad things from somewhere else that has no effect on them.

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Until it does. When they're driving down the street in a traffic jam, it suddenly becomes anarchy as they witness zombies doing what they do best: attacking and biting, thus remaking their victims into their own grisly image. And “World War Z” certainly knows how to set up its many action scenes with suspense, skill, and even humor. If only that same skill was applied to other aspects of the film.

Soon the city descends into chaos, but luckily Gerry's background into investigating the worst places on Earth for the UN makes him better equipped to survive than most, particularly when he's called back into action by one of his former employers as the best guy to investigate and perhaps find a way to beat back the living dead. In return, his boss manages to send a copter to rescue his family and keep them in a safe place while Gerry searches. It's good to be a one-percenter.

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Soon Gerry is off to various locations around the world to try to find the source of the infection and a way of fighting it. He goes to places like South Korea and Israel, but really, it just feels like “World War Z” is going through the motions. The various ways these countries would react and how their political situation and history affects it is mostly lost here.

Even the zombies are watered down. It's become so common for filmmakers to tone down the violence for a PG-13 rating that now it barely merits any comment, but when zombies barely do more than bite, well, it tends to take away theirs. It's also now trendy for zombies to move faster than a shuffle, but it hardly feels like they need to make zombies who have spread throughout the world any scarier.

The hurdles Gerry has to go through, the nature of the zombies themselves, the arbitrary feel of the country hopping, also makes “World War Z” feel less like a movie and more like a video game. The only thing goes over well is the film's ability to capture the terrifying feeling of a country descending into anarchy, where the random acts of strangers can range from casually horrific to incredibly kind.

The movie ends up being an example of what the book criticized most. (And its nonending certainly doesn't help.) When we let a mess get as big as this one, there's probably no miracle or wonder drug that will save us. While the film does offer up a rather creative solution, it feels like a way to avoid paying the price for our actions or lack thereof. While this would be fine if it were just another zombie movie, this is the one that filmmakers have been dying to make: zombies that can spread like fire thanks to our corrupt global society. And when you're adapting such excellent source material, average just isn't enough.

Grade: C+


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