Unfaithful to the book, disappointing exploitation film.

Rating: 2/10 (12 June 2014)

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!
I was so hoping this movie was going to be the ne plus ultra of zombie movies. After all, they had the material of Max Brooks to work from and his book "World War Z - An Oral History of the Zombie War" has SOOO much material that would bake an awesome zombie film.
What did Brad and Co. pick to use from the book? Only the title and the word "Zed" apparently.
I don't want to rehash a bunch of the other reviews. Just a few points that I agree with. The acting in this movie is very shallow, there is almost no character development and as a result no believable emotion between them. You don't really care what happens to them which is such a disappointment because you really felt a connection to the people in the book.
The action is semi-entertaining but there is a sharp censoring to the violence to the point that it takes some of the fun out of an already lackluster movie. Guns are going off all over the place, a few grenades get tossed around and you have about as much blood as you would find at a really sedate bridge club gathering. At one point one of the characters gets infected by a Zed and decides to take his own life, but thoughtfully walks out of camera view before pulling the trigger.
Which brings me to my biggest point in this review - the zombies themselves. Supposedly the virus that takes you from human to Zed happens in a matter of seconds. 12 seconds to be precise. Yet in one scene this Army Ranger captain gets bitten and has time to lament "I'm a Zed", hold a conversation with one of his troops over the radio, make the decision to kill himself and actually carry it out before suffering the slightest symptom of the infection. Talk about "Army Strong"! Everyone else in the movie starts foaming at the mouth, twitching violently on the ground and then 12 seconds later they get a new set of creepy eyes and a sudden desire to run around at 90 miles an hour and bite everything or everyone not nailed to the floor. Bite mind you, not eat.
Which brings up my next point - The zombies in the Brooks books attack humans as a source of food, the ones in this movie seem to be driven to infect the entire world as fast as they can in a poorly thought out idea to heighten plot tension for the audience. Not for food, not for survival just to see how fast they can overrun the entire planet. It just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. Run, bite, repeat. Oh and lets not forget their uncanny ability to distinguish healthy humans from terminally ill ones at a glance. What is THAT little gem about? Real zombies don't care if you are dying from black lung disease, they just want to eat you. After all dead is dead and Zed isn't picky about where his next meal comes from.
The CGI was pretty good but after awhile it was the only thing carrying the action scenes. Everything in between the action just made you realize how long the movie was and how little thought went into making it. Sooo much potential, sooo much truly awesome material they could have pulled from the books to give us an epic zombie movie and we got... this.
Hopefully in a few years Max will rethink how he wants his movie legacy to be remembered and someone with some actual talent making movies and who, oh I don't know actually READ THE BOOKS and has a working knowledge of the awesome story Max wrote about will do a remake worthy of the title World War Z.