WORLD WAR Z (2013): Cowboys & Zombies

World War Z is an acceptable summer blockbusterization of the usually low-budget and quiet zombie movie, if nothing more.  While other high-profile entries in the genre, like "The Walking Dead" and George Romero's Dead series, have focused on the abandonment, loss of civilization, and loss of humanity that comes from the rise of the living dead, World War Z shoehorns zombies into the classic alien attack template.  Faceless, identity-less intruders attack humanity.  Humanity defends itself.

Which is, well, fine, if the theater is air-conditioned and it's hot out.  But those looking for something more than the average action movie diversion will be disappointed.  World War Z is well-made, well-structured, well-acted, and never boring.  It proves that Marc Forster (Stay, Monster's Ball) can direct an action movie, when it might have shown how he could elevate the action movie to his own level.  Look at what Joss Whedon did with The Avengers.

Loosely based on Max Brooks's book, which took the template of a historical document, the movie World War Z creates a hero, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt), who I believe is the first action hero ever to be named Gerry with a G.  Disaster strikes his hometown of Philadelphia very early on.  A disease is zombifying humans rapidly in the usual way, though (as in 28 Days Later) humans turn to zombies within seconds of being bitten.  Gerry and his family are whisked away to a U.N. aircraft carrier stationed in the West Indies, where the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Fana Mokoena) needs his help in finding the origin of the disease.

The everyman action hero was never Pitt's forte, and it shows here.  He's much better at playing the complex antihero than the Bruce Willis-style ass-kicker, and his work here is a waste of his talent.  In early scenes Matthew Michael Carnahan's screenplay makes him less a hero than a guy who's there when the action is happening.  The movie's plot consists mostly of following Gerry around the world as he puts the pieces together and is chased away by zombies.  Forster stages his action sequences well, and allows for a personal point of view of the chaos rather than a sweeping, grandiose Michael Bay-like approach, but Pitt's character is a flimsy hook on which to hang this huge a movie.

Much of the movie's first two acts are made up of good-looking if cookie-cutter action scenes.  Production troubles and postproduction tinkering are evident, as actors--Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, David Morse, and most notably Elyes Gabel as a young neurologist--pass in and out of the film without much consequence.  Gerry's wife (Mireille Enos) and children are conspicuously dismissed after the first act.  We're taken on a brief jaunt to Israel, where the leadership makes an incredibly dumb mistake, though this sequence does lead to an admittedly great horror movie moment set on a plane.

Then at the halfway point, the movie ditches the global action and relocates to a W.H.O. center in Wales.  These scenes are quieter, tenser, and more believable than the disjointed first half.  We get closer to the zombies, who become more threatening than the faceless CGI masses we see in the first half.

The change in tone is no accident.  The movie was supposed to have ended with a climactic battle sequence in Russia, but budget constraints and disagreements over Pitt's character arc necessitated a complete rewrite of the movie's third act.  "Lost" writers Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard were brought in to deliver an ending that was more character-driven.  Their ending isn't more character-driven--Gerry is still a monotonous shlub--but at least for these scenes the movie sharpens its focus and the action seems to have a purpose.

There were myriad ideas for exactly what World War Z was supposed to be, and it appears that nobody quite reached an agreement.   Like Cowboys & Aliens (which also had a late rewrite by Lindelof), it's a summer blockbuster made by committee that's fun enough to half-please everyone.

** 1/2 out of ****