world war zzzz

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2013)

Here's the thing, Zombies are a metaphor. The Zombie character is a symbol of the blue collar office workers that drone to the corporate hive and than totter out in wearing a blank facial expression. Zombie epidemic is impossible and Zombie movies epidemic is pointless for quite some time. Longer than the first draft (of many, we learn) of world war z.
While Gerry lane (Brad Pitt in a reasonable but unmemorable performance) prepares pancakes for his kids as the ex-UN officer-turned-homemaker that he is, a growing army of the undead is spreading through every city. Brad is called from retirement to try and find a cure. After a brief and rather cryptic meeting with a virologist, Brad heads to Jerusalem to examine close hand the solution they effectively devised against the Zombies. As an Israeli, I was surprised not only by the fact that the Israelis actually solved a problem but also from the visions of unity between Israelis and Arabs. In one scene, Arabs and Israelis were standing and singing peace songs in unison. Maybe such an eminent threat will make us Israelis and Arabs set aside our differences and unite us all as one family but it definitely won't turn us into the Von-Trapp family.
Gerry (the formerly retired UN officer) has little time to dwell on the petty. After a brief session with a Mossad official with the least Israeli name anyone can think of and after roaming in in a city that never won the "Jerusalem lookalike" contest ,He continues with a wounded female Israeli soldier named "Segen" (Hebrew for "Lieutenant") to the last resort to cure the world of this endemic. Some of you might think I'm a little light handed when it comes to quotation marks but I assure you there is no one named "Segen", the Jerusalem in the movie has very little resemblance to the real Jerusalem and the entire premise and plot evolution seem like one big quotation mark that's not worth quoting.
The authenticity problems with the Jerusalem of WWZ is meaningless to the 99.99% of the people who, in my estimate, have never set foot in it. The thin plot and the flatness of all characters but Pitt's are the movies major flaw and when the sluggish pacing (especially during the last half hour) builds in for the big climax, it's poorly executed and the pieces of the story are rashly held with a duct tape dialog. The flawed writing is evident by the realization that if the (few) surviving characters would have fallen victim to the epidemic, it wouldn't have mattered one bit to the story's appeal. I'll go the extra mile and wildly speculate that the extensive rewrites made the problem even worse.
I think the movie's biggest problem is that it misses its mark. If it's meant to be a Zombie movie with a hidden criticism of human ineptness, it loses to the masterful "28 days later", if it's a one man journey in a dystopian apocalypse movie than it waddles behind "I am legend".
I have seen these aforementioned movies many times and I assure you I have no plan to see WWZ another time. The only good reason to see this movie is the opportunity to write a snide review in which I strongly suggest to Hollywood to bring the zombie movie genre to a final overdue rest.
The zombie metaphor, it seems, is undead too.
5 out of 10 in my FilmOmeter.