'WORLD WAR Z'

'WORLD WAR Z' (PG-13) (2 STARS)

Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard and Damon Lindelof
Directed by Marc Forster
Actors: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, David Morse, Matthew Fox.

In the first 15 minutes of the umpteenth Zombie movie "World War Z" I was thrilled and on the edge of my seat for a bravura scene set in Philadelphia. Former United Nations employee Gerry Lane and his family are driving through rush hour traffic when something strange happens. People are running like crazy, the police are out of control running wildly and there are explosions all over the city. It is a wonderful start and very well directed and I was happily surprised, this movie will be great! I don't know what happened but that first 15 minutes is all we will get that makes us sit up and take notice.

The rest of "World War Z" gets tedious and very dull and it can't decide if it wants to be a sprawling war epic but with zombies or a small shocker. Well if your budget is 200 million I expect a big, action packed war film and something special. There have been a lot of zombie movies and shows and you have to go the extra mile to make your zombie entertainment different than the others but this movie is weaker and surprisingly smaller in it's thinking. Director Marc Forster can't direct an action movie and there is not one shot after the first 15 minutes that is unique or special, it is too ordinary of a movie.

"World War Z" tells the story of a huge zombie and virus outbreak trapping ex United Nations employee Gerry Lane and his family in the middle. Gerry will leave the family and abandon the wife and mother played by Mireille Enos, the typical Hollywood move, giving a woman a shallow role. He will try to find out what caused the outbreak and how to get a cure but by the last half hour I didn't care. Gerry and no other character has any personality traits that stand out. I think Brad Pitt shouldn't be an action star, he is not really cut out for it. I also was shocked that you bring in a great character actor like David Morse to play a crazy ex C.I.A agent and give him 3 nonsensical minutes and then drop your best character. Huh?

Now we get to the zombies and I have not read the book but there is an outcry from the readers and fans that the zombies are faster in the movie than in the book. I really don't care how fast the zombies are and I didn't read the book. Though I can see why zombies have gotten faster over the years since 1968's "Night of the Living Dead". With technology getting advanced and every thing in our society is getting faster and more urgent doesn't it make sense that the zombies would want to be faster to catch up with modern society? Now that would make a compelling point of view for this movie to give but this movie is a weakly written head scratcher.

Rumor has it that this movie was delayed in production and the writers had to come up with a new ending and the new ending can't be better than the first one. I was totally confused by the end of this movie, the climax seems like it was made up in 5 minutes, it has no logic and it bored me. The ending is laughably bad and forced and since I didn't care about any character I wanted the end credits to roll as soon as they could. "World War Z" is a huge disappointment, tedious, unimaginative and a drag. Brad Pitt is miscast and the female characters are either paper thin or don't exist in this world. When you have the great AMC series "Walking Dead" and an original zombie movie like "Warm Bodies" out there before you, maybe you should make your movie smarter, huge and more cinematic. This movie is all CGI and no heart.