We watched World War Z last night and although it wasn't the best quality (it was a copy) I really enjoyed the film. It throws you straight into the action with the Lane family sitting in a seemingly innocent traffic jam when suddenly an explosion up ahead starts to pique Gerry Lane's interest/concern. The main character, Gerry Lane (played superbly by Brad Pitt) is former CIA, realises something just isn't right and when a dustbin lorry plows through the traffic creating a pathway enabling them to escape he takes the opportunity and follows the truck as far as he can. They're then forced to abandon the car but not before Gerry witnesses a crazed man bite the driver of another car, a soundtrack of a child counting is played in the background and you realise this 'disease' takes hold in around 8 seconds. I won't spoil the rest of the film for you and if you can ignore some of the more obvious plot holes (for example just why isn't there any security on top of the wall in Jerusalem?) then this is a great film. It doesn't have an hour of build up leading to the inevitable escape from the city, in fact the Lane family escape from the city within the first 15 minutes, it takes you all over the world from the US, to Israel via Korea, then to Wales of all places. There are some amazing CGI pieces in this but whilst not a particularly scary film in itself one of the scarier parts is the speed that the zombies can move, having been brought up with Romero's shuffling zombie style to see these move that fast is more than slightly unnerving. At least in Romero's films you could outrun and outsmart the zombies, however ever since Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later the newer generation of zombies seem faster and smarter.
This review concerns the film version of World War Z rather than the book on which it's based, although I do hope to do a review of the book as well as it is apparently very different. Look out for that review soon!
