World War Z: The Movie...not the book.

...not the book.  Keep that in mind and you may enjoy it.

    I finally got around to watching World War Z with Brad Pitt based on the novel of the same name by Max Brooks.  I am a big fan of the book, it's one of the few books I go back and read from time to time because some of the stories in it are just great to revisit.  This film, has absolutely nothing to do with the book so don't worry about reading the book before seeing this movie because they are drastically unalike.  I wrote about films based on books before and the little feedback I got recommended you should take each as its own separate story in its own medium.  It was with this movie in mind I wrote that and the recommendations helped me suck it up and check out this film, here's what I thought...

    The Zombies:  The only running zombies I ever liked were in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, I don't know why it worked for me but it did.  These zombies take it to a whole other level, these Zombies were the most running, head buttingist, high jumpers I have ever seen in a zombie movie. These zombies downed Red Bull or something, it was over kill for me, I prefer the George Romero type zombies, the ones you see in The Walking Dead (both the books and TV show).  The action was so fast paced you couldn't really see much in the way of zombie gore but it was still entertaining none the less.

    Acting:  I know this film went through a lot to get made as far as re-writes and re-shoots I think it may have made a lot of the actors tired, the one that had more than to words of dialogue anyway.  Brad Pitt is a pretty good actor and he's displayed a lot of deep believable emotion in other films but this one he seemed like he was just going through the motions.  There is a young girl he meets in Israel, played by Daniella Kertesz who probably does the best acting in the movie.  The action has a lot of shaky cam, which I don't like and is the reason you won't notice much of the zombie gore except for the few times Pitts character stops to notice something about a zombie.

    Story:  The story for what its worth is not bad considering the anthology style of the book would probably need a mini-series or more than one movie to tell.  The way they went with this film works for the action horror film they produced and it wasn't bad as its own product.  There's a problem, characters work to solve it and we get to see it through to a point.  If you know about the problems this film had you will probably be able to pick out the re-write moments with every death or change of location in the film.  Again, it's not bad and a nice save if you know of all the problems they had getting this film made.  Also, they keep mentioning that Brad Pitt worked for the U.N. doing investigations and that somehow made him some kind of Jason Bourne-ish retired operative guy but I was left still wondering what he actually did.

    This movie is okay to catch a matinee for, it's a solid rental at best, if you want some fast paced action, literal waves of zombies, and a zombie fix for the summer this is worth checking out.  If you have no interest in any of those things though, save your money.  Fans of the book don't feel let down, we still have a really good book to read and to some this may be a really good movie to see.  The website called The Oatmeal says it best with this image, if you keep that in mind when seeing this you won't be too upset.