International Walking Dead with Brad Pitt & Big Budget

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 2013)

As a fan of the Walking Dead TV show and "Dawn of the Dead" movie, it would take a lot for filmmakers to mess up this effort for "World War Z" given such a large reported budget, so you can count my review as biased. Director Marc Forster's movie is a sprawling disaster film with Zombies as the disaster. It manages to work for the most part as long as you forgive some issues which you probably are aware of. The movie essentially an International Walking Dead on steroids with Brad Pit starring. Some of the aspects of the movie I liked was it's pacing, tension , and suspense that it managed to pull off. The effects were OK, but not outstanding. The acting is decent; Brad Pitt is satisfactory in the movie. (Spoilers) What I didn't like (as usual with many movies) were several poor implausibilities that were missed such as Pitt's character forgetting to turn off his cell phone in a critical situation (South Korea) to stay quiet, and ditto later for mistakenly kicking a soda can. Similarly and more blatantly, how did the Israelis military and chanting crowd not know to keep noise down with so many zombies in Earshot? Finally as a technical issue, Satellite phones cannot work in the hull of a ship. The signal cannot pass through the various metal bulk-heads. These are the kinds of written in stupidities that are tiresome, clichéd, lazy and hurt a movie's performance. Still considering, I liked World War Z as it had enough going for it to keep it interesting although not spectacular - and remember I give it the benefit of the doubt for liking the genre in the first place. Recommended for Zombie fans (7/10)