The "A" zombie

Rating: Null/10 (23 June 2013)

If it can be called an "umbrella genre", zombie movies is likely the one that boasts the largest number of variations, from hair-raising horrors to side splitting funnies. What's more, like the zombie mutation, it doesn't stop growing. A recent one, "Warm bodies", blossomed into romance territory in the proud Shakespearean tradition: "rom-zom-com"? Now, zombies have elevated themselves from the hitherto "B" movie existence to a huge budget "A" blockbuster.
It takes someone like Brad Pitt to pull this off, and it has taken him over six years, purportedly. Although the movie has a sizable cast, it is essentially Pitt's one man show, where he plays a UN investigator globe-trotting to find the source, and a cure, for this epidemic of global proportion. Don't be late. Before you can blink twice, a normal big city traffic jam erupts into pandemonium when the zombie attack starts without any preliminaries. After an exciting sequence that will have you at the edge of your seat, the protagonist and his wife and daughters are air lifted to a military control centre comprising a flotilla of warships from which he is sent to various locations around the world on the aforementioned mission. This is in essence the movie, the details of which I am not going to elaborate.
Before looking at the actors, let us look at (literally) the zombies. Compared with their counterparts in other movies too many to mention, the zombies in WWZ are among the least terrifying to look at. You may even see objects resembling them in a normal after-work rush hour subway ride. There is also a conspicuous absence blood and gore. What makes them terrifying here is speed and sound – lightning speed matched by, unlike in the normal physical phenomenon of thunder-and-lightning, a spontaneous audio assault that make your heart stop. The set pieces are all impressive, but the one that everybody mentioned is the high walls build around Jerusalem which reminds me of a similar wall in aforementioned "Warm bodies" which in turn reminds you of the one in "Game of thrones".
Brad Pitt basically carries the entire movie. While there is a large supporting cast, they do no register as memorable. Two women however deserve mentioning. Mareille Enos plays his wife who after the initial sequence, interacts with our protagonist only by phone. You would wish that she is given more screen time. Comparatively, you see more of Daniella Kertesz playing a professional Israeli soldier in a role of his action sidekick.