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A honcho in the United Nations has withdrawn from the various war zones of the world to devote himself to his family, when a zombie pandemic breaks out and spreads death and destruction everywhere, - and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

Sabotage (2014) or, Hardcore Badasses!

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Arnold Schwarzenegger and his band of roughnecks meet you heavily armed in David Ayer's Sabotage

A DEA operations group 'lose' 10 mil. $ at a big explosion of drug cash money and are then investigated for months. When they are finally activated again, they begin dying one by one.

Sabotage is a hardboiled, violent, extremely bloody revenge action-thriller that also involves drugs and f-bombs and other cuss-words dropped left and right continuously. - It won't appeal to all, for sure.
But it has good characters; not least the two female ones: Olivia Williams (Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)) looks to be enjoying her time playing a radically different, strong, contemporary cop character, and Mireille Enos (The Killing (2011-14)) reminded me of a young, red-headed, white Grace Jones, (which is a compliment in the context.) They are good, and so are Joe Manganiello (Magic Mike (2012)), Sam Worthington (Avatar (2009)) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Last Stand (2013)) as the natural center of the movie, group leader Breacher.
Sabotage features cool cars and weapons and a nightmarish train-scene. It all leads forward with building tension to SPOILER a Mexican finale that is a little incongruent to the rest of the film, but still strangely enjoyable, in which Arnie comes out as the avenger from the North, good as always.
It is directed by David Ayer (End of Watch (2012)), who is also seeing the release of his huge WWII tank movie Fury in 2014. 

Related posts:

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Olivia Williams wears cool shades, looks cools and plays well in David Ayer's Sabotage

Thai poster with a stone-set Arnold for David Ayer's Sabotage

Watch an awesome trailer for the film here

Cost: 35 mil. $
Box office: 17.5 mil. $
= Big flop
[Sabotage was the worst opening for an Arnold-starring film in over 30 years (just 5.3 mil. $ US opening weekend) and only got to 10.5 mil. $ in total American gross, which is terrible. The rest of the world didn't help Sabotage much, which didn't even have a theatrical premiere in several countries like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Canada and Hungary. It got bad reviews generally, but apart from that I cannot explain its lamentable result. Younger male action-fans are obviously not a dependable segment anymore, (and that's really sad.)]

What do you think of Sabotage?
Why do you think it flopped so badly?

Gangster Squad (2013) or, Good Men vs. Bad Men!

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Los Angeles is ravaged by the Jewish gangster boss Mickey Cohen, but one good police chief wants to get rid of him, and he gets a pertinacious, tough cop to lead the group which is to crush Cohen.
Gangster Squad is highly stylized and handsomely produced, but cartoonish in its simplified representation of reality; good vs. bad.
Reality yields to action and gore in this forgettable, thoughtless, - but entertaining - shoot-em-up-movie. It is based on true events but takes so many liberties in its storytelling that it is more fiction than historical by any reasonable account.
Sean Penn (Mystic River (2003)) goes theatrical with his heavily make-up-created villain. Ryan Gosling (Drive (2011)) not so much plays a character as merely being a sex-steaming model for the film. The macho-picture that is Gangster Squad also mauls over one of its few female roles, Josh Brolin's wife in the movie (Mireille Enos), who only plays functional second banana to the inelegant, stomping picture.
It is directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland (2009)), who had to reshoot a scene of a shooting at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood following the Aurora-shooting (during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that killed 12 people and injured 58). The real-life massacre also changed the trailer and pushed back the release of Gangster Squad by around 6 months.
The squad that is the basis of Gangster Squad has also been the basis of another movie, Lee Tamahori's better Mulholland Falls (1996).
Since the relative flop of this and Fleischer's movie before it, 30 Minutes or Less (2011), he has reverted to TV gigs for the time being.


Related posts:

Ruben Fleischer: 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]
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]  
2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

30 Minutes or Less (2011) or, Idiots and Lesser Idiots

'Pulp' version of the Gangster Squad poster

 Watch the film's in-your-face trailer right here

Budget: 60 mil. $
Box office: 105.2 mil. $
= Minor flop

What do you think of Gangster Squad?