World War Z

[3.5 stars] [IMDb Link]

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This movie stars Brad Pitt, and absolutely nobody else I'd ever heard of. (Well, with one exception, noted below.) Theory: if you have a special-effects-laden movie with Brad Pitt in it, you won't have a lot of money for hiring other actors. They may have been recruiting at the Seacoast Reperatory, for all I know.

(Seriously, the other actors are fine. It's just I'd never heard of them.)

Anyway: Brad plays Gerry Lane, who used to (it's apparent) work defeating international evildoers. But you can't do that and have a full family life, so he's resigned and lives in a perfect house outside Philly with a perfect wife and perfect kids. The only clue we get that something might be wrong is the chattering on the news channel in the background. Gerry and his family are oblivious, and why shouldn't they be?

Well, they might not have driven into Philly, which suddenly erupts into serious zombie chaos, with explosions and panic and people getting chewed. Brad and his family barely escape, and start making their way up I-95. But it's only a matter of a few video minutes when they're in peril once more. The zombies in this flick move fast, and are surprisingly good at teamwork.

Gerry is roped into a desperate play to find the root cause of the zombie outbreak, in hopes that will reveal a cure: he jets from Korea, to Israel, and finally to Wales, each time barely getting away unbitten.

As mentioned: the special zombie effects are pretty good, and it's action-packed. Kind of reminded me of a video game.

Oh yeah: the other actor I recognized was David Morse. This is neat, because Morse and Pitt were also in Twelve Monkeys, a different sort of apocalyptic movie, nearly twenty years ago. Maybe in another couple decades, they'll do something else.


Last Modified 2024-01-27 12:30 PM EDT