Better than expected

Rating: 7/10 (23 June 2013)

'World War Z' hasn't had an easy road to the big screen. Work on the film began around 2006 and from then on, the production was troubled. Brad Pitt became involved early on, putting up much of his own money for it – with his production company Plan B – yet even he must have been worried when he saw how difficult the making of the film was becoming. Directors were changed and the script passed through the hands of about five scriptwriters. The budget started out somewhere around $120 – 130 million, but it continued to rise and is now reported to be over $200 million. Rumours abounded reporting tensions between Pitt and director Marc Forster. Then, the original ending was entirely scraped, so reshoots were required to somehow be weaved into the existing narrative. After all this trouble, I went into 'World War Z' expecting a mess with cracks evident on screen. However, in a pleasant surprise, it flows nicely with the new ending working seamlessly.
This film is many things, but it isn't really an adaptation of Max Brooks' 2003 novel of the same name, even though it started out as such. Brooks' acclaimed novel has a multi-narrative structure that would better lend itself to a TV show as opposed to a film. Whereas the book concerns multiple narrators, the movie solely follows ex-UN official Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) who experiences a zombie outbreak first-hand, narrowly escaping the chaos with his family. However, his former boss asks him to travel the world to search for a possible cure for the pandemic.
Most zombie movies and TV shows (good or bad) take place after the initial outbreak, whether it be 'The Walking Dead', or Danny Boyle's brilliant '28 Days Later'. In a refreshing turn, 'World War Z' depicts the outbreak the minute it happens, and these scenes are some of the best in the film, conveying a frenzied feeling of panic. It feels what it would really be like - cars crash, people scramble in every direction, disaster everywhere. Secondly, the majority of zombie films and shows find their characters confined to a small area; for example, the shopping centre 'Dawn of the Dead'. One of the best aspects of 'World War Z' is that it shows the zombie pandemic on a global scale, with the central character travelling from the U.S. to Korea to Israel to Wales. This globe-trotting element provides the film with some thrilling setpieces, in particular the relentless scenes where thousand- strong swarms of zombies flood through the streets of Jerusalem or the initial panic in Philadelphia.
Marc Forster is a director with a mixed back record – 'Stranger than Fiction' may have been great, but he followed it up with the huge disappointment that was 'Quantum of Solace' – thankfully, 'World War Z' is significantly better than the latter. It's no masterpiece, but it's a quite good and consistently enjoyable romp. Pitt delivers a solid performance and makes Lane an engaging protagonist. The lack of gore and the presence of fast zombies may annoy fans of the book and zombie traditionalists, but I found that both worked (especially the latter) in the context of the movie. It's not the book, but 'World War Z' is still a good film, especially after all the trouble it went through.