The bar has been raised in the character department

Rating: 6/10 (19 September 2013)

World War Z has the direct makeup of a summer blockbuster; a premise that is appealing to a large percentage of the public, enough action to fulfill another percentage's demands, enough background knowledge towards the final act, and a universally recognizable stare at its center. On that note, the film is a success because it features a lot of things that will appeal to a great deal of people. However, examining it from a smaller viewpoint, one that analyzes character-investment, development, and layout, one will see a cluttered film that goes on for a long time but never seems to make much progress.
Even though I have not read the book, I can't help but feel that the film does something of a disservice to it. If I had not read the novel a film is based on, I try and research the contents and the impact it has garnered in order to provide something of a relatability point. The novel appeared to have contained a wide-variety of characters impacted by a zombie apocalypse, a series of instances that bring up commentary points for contemporary America, and provided readers with a plausible "what-if" story about a zombie apocalypse.
My immediate question upon viewing World War Z; where was this in the film? Where was the broad focus, the multiple characters, and the points about social and political life as we know it? Even if I'm misinformed about the novel, Brad Pitt's Gerry Lane character and story are still very thin and underdeveloped. If the film has incorporated all of the above, or even half of it, it could've possibly raised the standard for summer blockbusters into shockingly subversive territory. Instead, it sells its material and cast short, and the deeper the analysis, the clearer the evidence; World War Z is basic entertainment with a gargantuan budget, which is rumored to be over $500 million with advertising expenses.
The story revolves around former UN employee Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), his wife Karin (Mireille Enos), and their two daughters as they try to survive a zombie outbreak that occurs right when they are sitting in New York traffic. When all hell immediately breaks loose, they hide out in a small apartment, where Gerry learns he must go assist Dr. Andrew Fassbach (Elyes Gabel), a virologist looking to find the source of the outbreak. Once an origin, production on a vaccination can be mass-produced and quickly-delivered before the entire country is nothing but a wasteland inhabited by the walking dead.
The first act of the film assumes traditional action and disaster movie-style, which is to portray a cacophony of catastrophic events occurring all at once in an overpopulated cityscape. At the middle of this chaos is, as stated, Lane's family, who survives numerous instances of peril akin to how John Cusack's family survived numerous close calls in Roland Emmerich's 2012. However, as these close calls aren't what World War Z rests on, thankfully adhering to a more cause-and-effect relationship with the way this outbreak began.
This relationship takes up about the last hour of the film, and as a result, drags a bit because character-investment has been traded for meticulous and plodding plot-development towards the outbreak. With that being said, World War Z makes for efficient summer entertainment, but if one is seeking a zombie picture with a human focus, selective gore, and true vibes of uniqueness, the undiscovered gem The Battery lies on all video-on-demand services waiting to be viewed.
Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireielle Enos, and Elyes Gabel. Directed by: Marc Forster.