The zombie thriller World War Z starring Brad Pitt opens today and the reviews are starting to roll in. Based on Max Brooks’s novel of the same name, the film pits Pitt’s character (pun intended), United Nations employee Gerry Lane, against a sprawling Zombie pandemic that takes out armies and governments while threatening to raze all of humanity to the ground.
I’m just going to get this out of the way and let you all know that I have a severe man-crush on Brad Pitt, so my own personal review is a tad biased, and I haven’t even seen the movie yet. I mean, I celebrate most of the four-time Academy Award nominee’s entire collection from Thelma & Louise to Sleepers to Moneyball. Let’s face it, the guy knows his way around a movie set the way Michael Jackson did a stage. Total dominance. And the fact that the dark, apocalyptic flick was helmed by a proven director in Marc Foser, who directed the grim and gritty Monter’s Ball, only bodes well for the movie’s success. But let’s see what the pros have to say.
David Denby, New Yorker: “Despite some conventional passages and a soft ending, Forster and Brad Pitt, who is a producer of the film as well as its star, pulled the picture together. They also managed to reawaken in a large-scale movie the experience of shock.”
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: “Be grateful that Forster doesn’t screw up like he did with Quantum of Solace. His jolts may be PG-13-safe and thematically disconnected, but that zombie lurch from coach to first-class on a commercial jet is a nerve-fryer. Ditto the finale at a lab in Wales. As producer and star of World War Z, Pitt has pulled a potential disaster from the fire. The suspense is killer.”
Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: “The filmmakers go for suspense, but they condescend to the audience, as if we hadn’t seen all this before. And although there are some initial feints at using zombies as a metaphor for third-world issues and cultural differences, the picture forgets all that stuff by the final reel. World War Z opens with an undeniable bang. But if this is the way the world ends, we’re going out with a whimper.”
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: “Pitt is fine, director Mark Forster gets some startling moments out of his creatures (mostly by keeping them offscreen at first) and the film has a few nice notes…But even if you didn’t know about the film’s many reshoots and re-edits (or see all those different writers’ names in the credits), you’d notice the jarring shifts from act to act. It’s supposed to be a zombie story. But the movie itself feels more like Frankenstein’s monster — stitched together out of mismatched parts, stumbling herky-jerkily into the dark.”
World War Z is now playing so check your local listing for a theater near you. For those residing in and around The Hub, be sure to check out showtimes here.
