WORLD WAR Z

WORLD WAR Z

Jeri Jacquin, Movie Maven

Coming to theatres this Friday from director Marc Forster, Plan B Entertainment and Paramount Pictures comes the fright found in WORLD WAR Z.

This film tells the story of Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) who works for the United Nations. Taking time with his wife Karin (Mireille Enos) and daughters Constance (Sterling Jerins) and Rachel (Abigail Hargrove) they enjoy each other’s company in a traffic jam.

They are all quick to realize something is horribly wrong and people are being attacked. When Gerry sees a creature up close he realizes it’s a human being but not. Running with his family, Gerry calls Umutoni (Fana Mokoena) and is quickly rescued. But this rescue comes at a price.

Gerry must discover all he can about how this started and what it will take to save humanity from its own destruction before there is no one else left on the planet!

FINAL WORD: Pitt does a fine job as Gerry Lane. Trying to be more involved with the family the zombies just pulled him right back in. This is a chance for Pitt to get into the action without being an action-hero. This character allows Pitt to really give viewers a solid performance but at times could have used a tad more emotion.

Enos as Karin has a smaller role here, mainly staying behind with the children while her man saves the world. Nothing wrong with that but Karin – word of advice – wait till the man calls you first! Jerins and Hargrove as the daughters also carry their own baggage of crazy fear as would any kid when creepy adults are trying to snack on you!

The zombies are fast in the chase and even faster in the making. Traveling to different parts of the world it’s nice to see no matter where you are – zombies only have one goal from the United States to Israel. Probably the only non-living human beings that don’t care who you are or where you are from.

Other cast include: Fabrizio Guido as Tommy, Michiel Huisman as Ellis, Daniella Kertesz as Segen, James Dale as Captain Speke, Ludi Boeken as Jurgen Warmbrunn, Matthew Fox as the Parajumper, Elyes Gabel as Andrew Fassbach, Peter Capaldi, Moritz Bleibtreu, Ruth Negga and Pierfrancesco Favino as the World Health Organization doctors and David Morse as the Ex-CIA Agent.

TUBS OF POPCORN: I give WORLD WAR Z three and a half tubs of popcorn out of five. Did I find a lot of things that could have been better – absolutely. So lets get the bad out of the way first – the 3D really kind of screwed with the zombies with blurry scenes that just didn’t work. There needed to be more zombie action (hello…called World War Z and that Z stands for zombies!) instead of scenes shot high up showing the scrambling of humans/zombies and anything else going on.

Is this memorable? In some ways but I truly think audiences will be expecting more and that’s where this film takes chances. Did I enjoy this? Very much so! I really appreciated the film jumping right into the action and not dragging out a beginning. The CGI is pretty cool and except for momentary lags here and there it moves forward.

There is one specific zombie that I’ve totally gone gutso for and it won’t take viewers but a hot minute to figure out which one. The scene is pretty cool and tense.

All this being said, WORLD WAR Z is what a summer blockbuster should be. Its fun, has tons of action, zombies, a storyline, zombies, characters, its smart, will sell tons of duct tape and did I mention there were zombies?

In the end – there will be no warning!