Misses the mark

Rating: 6/10 (23 September 2013)

World War Z is a movie that has great potential but goes absolutely nowhere. The most glaring issue, this is a zombie movie without zombie action.
What do people expect to see in zombie movies? Zombies attacking and munching on people. Instead, WWZ gives the audience zombies running around at Mach speed and cut scenes at what should be interesting points.
Pitt's character is wooden and unsympathetic. Even as an anti-hero, I didn't buy into the character. It's clear that Pitt and his wife/family are very close but does the audience need to be constantly remind of this? The story makes very little sense with Pitt traveling across the globe in search of answers. What makes matters worse, very little of the data gathered has an effect on the final outcome of the film.
The South Korea airbase scene in particular adds no value to the story. Everyone is aware that they need to be extremely quiet to sneak onto a plane to leave. Pitt however, leave his phone on and receives a call from his wife at the worse possible moment and people become dead as a result. Pitt's character is supposed to be the best at what he does but yet fails to observe safety protocols? This makes no sense.
The hoards of CGI created living dead are unconvincing and in some scenes, resemble the ones in "I am Legend." Not much in way of technological improvements over a film released in 2007 if you ask me.
Camera work is terrible with shots bouncing up and down, side to side. Another film ruined with "shaky cam" filming .
In a way, this movie parallels the 2011 film "Contagion." In fact, you can replace the Pitt investigative scenes with the ones from "Contagion" and have a more cohesive story.
There is very little blood shown on screen. Given its PG-13 rating, violence of course needed to be toned down but not to the point of avoidance. Fans of the zombie genre may find this film a bit lacking but I think the producers of WWZ wanted to sanitize it to appeal to a wider audience.