More entertaining and thrilling than I expected!

Rating: 8/10 (4 August 2013)

World War Z famously suffered from a lot of production problems and delays but what kind of a film did we eventually get? I'm happy to say that I was actually pleasantly surprised at how good the film was.
The pacing of the movie is very good, I certainly wasn't bored at any time during the movie. The movie never lets up as director Marc Forster keeps things moving on quickly. The movie basically consists of three different acts. The start of the movie in Philadelphia was really chaotic and you could really feel it. The film did a great job of portraying the panic of a sudden zombie outbreak and it was a very strong start to the movie. Then Brad Pitt travels around the world searching for a cure to the zombie outbreak and finally ends up in a medical research facility in Wales. The middle portion of the movie was perhaps the weakest (still good though!) as I especially enjoyed the ending where they have to sneak around the medical facility. The movie manages to build a lot of suspense there.
Brad Pitt does a good job in this film as a retired UN investigator and newly focused family man. It's not a too memorable role but he does a good job with what he was given. Daniella Kertesz is quite memorable as the Israeli soldier. Other performances were okay, nothing too special or bad. The zombies were quite well done when there were real actors there with makeup. The CGI use was of course quite understandable in the larger scenes where there's hundreds of zombies on the screen simultaneously. There's not that much gore here which actually made the movie feel more serious. Maybe it's just that I've seen enough zombies beheaded and smashed in the Walking Dead that made me appreciate World War Z's approach.
There were many places where people were acting stupidly when you really start thinking about it but that didn't really mess with my suspension of disbelief because I was really enjoying the movie. If you don't get engrossed in the movie, you could easily nitpick a lot of scenes of course. There was also some political satire in the movie with the bit about North Korea and the wall in Jerusalem. I just wish there would've been more of that.
All in all, the movie could have been a bit better though. I bet there was a bit edgier film under there that was lost with all the re-shoots and production problems. Still, a very enjoyable and entertaining movie nonetheless.