World War Z (2013) - Forster, Pitt and Co.'s preposterous zombie junk

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If you think this artificial-looking poster for Marc Forster's World War Z shows Brad Pitt sitting in a plane of some sort, look on the next poster at the bottom of the review

A honcho in the United Nations has withdrawn from the various war zones of the world to devote himself to his family, when a zombie pandemic breaks out and spreads death and destruction everywhere, - and he must be the one to find a solution!

Our hero's family doesn't get set up as characters, before the zombie apocalypse hits, and so we don't feel much of anything through their following trials. - It doesn't help that Mireille Enos (The Killing (2011-14)) plays the mother with a very strange above-it-all attitude throughout.
Co-producer-star Brad Pitt (Fight Club (1999)) flies around as some kind of international anti-zombie James Bond in World War Z, wherein he continually winds up in confusing, action-packed scenes full of death and living deads. We don't see any gore because of the film's PG-13 rating, (dictated by its huge budget), and that is in itself bizarre in such a death-littered zombie movie, - a bit like watching a musical in which the songs have been censured away without a word.
It all makes for an uncompelling, boring and pretty ridiculous product until the late scenes in the WHO facility which attain a certain computer-game-like suspense. SPOILER But the the film ends with a line that doubles down on the shallowness of it all: "The war has only just begun", Pitt illuminates us, - after seemingly just having saved all of mankind?!? Apparently, despite the peace that is broached in the film's end, the World War Z filmmakers thought a feeling of continual, devastating war was what was direly needed in 2013 and what their audience should take away from their preposterous botch job of a movie. Of course I am overthinking this; - the truth is they just wanted to plug a sequel.
World War Z is written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (Deepwater Horizon (2016)) and Drew Goddard (Lost (2005-08)), based on the Max Brooks' (son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft) novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006), and directed by the (sometimes) great German filmmaker Marc Forster (Machine Gun Preacher (2011)).

Related posts:

Marc Forster: 2013 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED VI]

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
Machine Gun Preacher (2011) - Butler finds faith and a Sudanese purpose in Forster's incredible true story

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 190 mil. $

Box office: 540 mil. $

=  Box office success

[World War Z premiered June 2 (London) and runs 116 minutes. The project came about because Pitt wanted a film of his that his apparently zombie-loving sons could enjoy before turning 18, (according to himself.) The film was budgeted at 125 mil. $ and so ended up going 52 % over budget. Filming took place in Malta, Wales, Scotland, England, Budapest, Hungary and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from June - November 2011 with reshoots from October - December 2012. The film was plagued by script disagreements, rewrites and, in Budapest, the Hungarian counter-terrorism unit raiding and seizing 85 rifles that were to be used in the film for entering them illegally into the country. The film opened #2 behind Monsters University with 66.4 mil. $, Pitt's biggest opening yet, in North America, where it spent a total of 3 weeks in the top 5 and grossed 202.3 mil. $ (37.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were South Korea with 33.6 mil. $ (6.2 %) and Russia with 24.8 mil. $ (4.6 %). A sequel is in the works, possibly helmed by David Fincher for a 2017 release, although it seems unlikely since production has yet to commence. World War Z is fresh at 67 % with a 6.2 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of World War Z?