Video review: "World War Z"

The best movie review I saw of “World War Z” was actually a Venn diagram by The Oatmeal, one of the sharpest webcomics around. In the area between the overlapping circles that showed everything the book and the film had in common, it simply read: “It’s titled World War Z.”

Hilarious, and true. Because if you go into this big-budget horror/disaster thinking it bears anything more than a passing resemblance to the novel by Max Brooks, you’re bound to come away disappointed.
Which isn’t to say the movie they did make is terrible. It’s merely OK, with a few highly engaging action sequences interspersed with stuff that is loopy and/or dull.

Good, bad or indifferent, it’s just not the book.

While Brooks opted for a journalistic approach following an ensemble cast of characters, director Marc Forster and his trio of screenwriters went with a standard leading man story. Brad Pitt plays Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator picked to lead the team tracking down the source of the plague rapidly turning the world’s population into a swarm of zombies.

He travels the globe, including a stop in Jerusalem for an epic battle against a horde of undead attempting to scale the ancient city’s walls. He picks up new allies along the way, but also loses many good people.

Forster is ham-handed at the non-special effects action scenes, to the point we sometimes have trouble discerning exactly what’s happening. One fight-and-flight up a skyscraper stairwell looks like it was shot with a camera draped in dark cloth.

Things build up to a decent but rather predictable showdown in a remote laboratory where the ultimate zombie cure can be found. Again, this veers wildly from the book, where the only panacea for the outbreak was: “Kill all the zombies.”

Personally, I would love to see a faithful adaption of “World War Z” – as soon as Hollywood gets around to making it.

Video goodies are so-so. The DVD version gets you exactly nothing, so you’ll have to spring for the Blu-ray upgrade to get any extras.

The highlight is an unrated version of the film featuring more gruesome action that in the watered-down PG-13 theatrical edition. You also get six featurettes on the making of the film, bringing the book to the screen (sort of), and the scientific realities behind zombie mythology.

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Review: "World War Z"

The thing you have to understand about zombie movies is that we've reached the point where virtually every example is a hybrid comedy. Winks and smirks have become an indelible part of stories about the walking undead. There's gore and death, but we take it sardonically -- even cheering when a loathsome human takes the bite.

People thought "Shaun of the Dead" was such a revelation, but all it really did was take a genre that was 60/40 horror-to-funny and flip it around.

That changed with the novel "World War Z," which approached the notion of a zombie apocalypse with total earnestness. Author Max Brooks, following up on "The Zombie Survivor Guide," tackled the material with a completely different mindset from the familiar ragtag group of survivors gradually getting chomped.

Brooks had an almost journalistic approach, relating vignettes from myriad different characters and perspectives from all over the globe. Rather than a single dominating story thread, it was a patchwork of diverse tales skillfully woven into a pattern.

The long-gestating movie starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball") takes the mindset of the book, and throws away most everything else. The focus is on Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator tasked with finding the source of the virus that is rapidly turning normal people into ferocious flesh-eaters. Gerry, and nearly everything that happens to him, is a concoction of the movie.

In effect, they kept Brooks' frame but painted a completely different picture inside it. The result is plausibly entertaining, and commendable for the sober way it approaches the concept of a plague of undead.

About those zombies. Like other recent iterations of their ilk, a person can morph into one in a matter of seconds after being bit. They're of the "fast zombie" variety, running and jumping faster than an Olympic-level human athlete, and have a tendency toward spasmodic twitching and clattering their teeth, like they can't wait to sing their fangs into you. They seem to behave with a collectively mind at times, working cooperatively to scale high walls and other feats we've never seen before.

It's a novel, unnerving approach.

After an intro in which Lane gets his wife and two daughters to safety aboard a Navy ship, he's strong-armed into leading an expedition to South Korea, where it was believed the outbreak first started. His further questing takes him to Jerusalem and then Wales, his allies rapidly getting picked off, as he frantically searches for a weakness in the virus.

Some of the story is extremely effective, such as the rapid spread of the virus amongst a jetliner full of passengers. James Badge Dale has a memorable turn as an Army officer cut off from his command, who's adopted a doggedly systematic approach to fighting zombies.

Other parts are just loopy, such as an encounter with a rogue CIA agent who's pulled out all his own teeth and has a nutty theory about the Jews having known about the danger all along. Turns out he's right (!), leading to a sequence in Israel that strains credulity. Although we do pick up another interesting supporting character there, Daniella Kertesz as no-nonsense soldier Segen.

A trio of screenwriters keeps the audience guessing, though some of the contortions of the plot sap energy from the proceedings. The tamed-down PG-13 violence doesn't help, nor does Forster's ham-handed camera work during many of the action scenes. A chase up a building stairwell is so murky and jangled, we can barely tell what's going on.

(Definitely pass on the 3-D upgrade, which hardly makes a difference other than rendering the image even dimmer.)

I like the idea of "World War Z" more than the movie they actually made. I suppose a jumble of random characters wouldn't have been possible for a mainstream movie. But the filmmakers end up jettisoning the very thing that made Brooks' book special.

Review: "Alex Cross"

An aggressively dumb drama/thriller, "Alex Cross" clumsily retraces the steps of other movies about lawmen hunting down depraved serial killers who taunt them along the way. With its simplistic characterizations and clunky dialogue, it makes you think of  "Se7en" or "In the Line of Fire" as remade by a bunch of 15-year-olds ... and not particularly talented 15-year-olds.

Morgan Freeman played the role of Alex Cross, a brilliant African-American psychologist/detective, in a pair of middling 1990s adaptations of the novels by James Patterson.

Tyler Perry has a less intellectual, more visceral take on the character. That's a great idea in theory, but his ham-fisted performance results in a guy who seems all over the map -- hot and cold, a paragon of righteousness one minute, a rule-busting vigilante the next. He doesn't seem so much a person as a conflation of emotional highs and lows.

Perry, known for putting on a dress as the wild-and-crazy grandma Madea in a string of comedies he wrote and directed, just isn't convincing in a grim lead role. The audience in the preview screening I attended tittered several times at moments that were intended to be serious.

They also were amused by his, ah, ample physique struggling through a number of fight scenes. Director Rob Cohen doesn't help, resorting to the usual hackery of quick edits, tight framing and a shaky camera. The final showdown between Cross and the villain should be enshrined in film schools everywhere as how not to shoot an action scene.

Speaking of that villain -- Matthew Fox is the film's one redeeming quality as Picasso, a mysterious killer who's a hired assassin but clearly relishes his gruesome trade more than a cool professional would. Looking like every ounce of fat has been boiled off his lean frame, Fox flashes a death's-head rictus grin that is truly unsettling. He seems like he wants to shiver his way out of his own skin.

The character's backstory is never really explored -- we see a newspaper clipping that says something about a rapist, and Picasso (he's never otherwise named) repeatedly blames Cross for turning him into what he is. But the screenplay by Marc Moss and Kerry Williamson doesn't follow through.

Their transcendently awful dialogue is truly something to behold. It's as if every time the characters are faced with a situation somebody asked, "Now what's the most obvious thing he/she would say here?"

For instance, when Picasso applies his sordid trade to Cross' family and he starts gearing up for revenge, his mother (Cicely Tyson) lectures him: "Look at you! Self-appointed judge, jury and executioner!"

Secondary characters are strictly by-the-numbers, like Edward Burns as Cross' laconic partner/best friend, the scrappy supportive wife (Carmen Ejogo) and the smarmy corporate types who sneer at the cops even as the lawmen protect them from being carved up by Picasso.

A bundle of clichés wrapped in heaping helping of awful sauce, "Alex Cross" is a total flop as Tyler Perry's crossover to serious moviemaking. Better dust off that oversized dress.

1.5 stars out of four

Video Review: "Lost" Season Six and Complete Collections

When it debuted in 2004, "Lost" was immediately recognizable as groundbreaking television.

Here was a huge, high-budget network show with an excellent cast and an ambitious, sprawling narrative -- the sort of thing that previously had only been attempted on HBO, or theatrical film series like "Lord of the Rings."

Like millions, I was entranced by the riddle of a mysterious island on which a disparate group of passengers from Oceanic Flight 815 crash-land.

The first season introduced us to a roster of engaging characters -- stoic doctor Jack Shephard, escaped convict Kate Austen, tortured con man Sawyer, and tracker John Locke comprised the core of a cast that eventually numbered in the dozens -- and slowly unveiled the layered mysteries of the island: Marauding jungle monster, crazy French scientist-turned-hermit, and a strange hatch buried in the ground.

Also like many others, I felt the series lost its way in its second year -- personified by Mr. Eko, a would-be priest whose redemptive journey dominated that entire season, but who, after his abrupt death, was never mentioned again.

"Lost" sporadically regained its focus in subsequent seasons -- especially a strong third year buoyed by the introduction of the slithery, charismatic leader of The Others, Ben Linus -- but never recaptured the magic of that first outing.

I, for one, found the show's conclusion to be a disappointing, not to mention predictable, variation on (spoiler ahead) the tired old "it-was-all-just-a-dream" deus ex machina.

The sixth and final season is now available as a collection, and there's a pricey -- but exhaustively complete -- series collection.

The season six collection contains a host of extras. The DVD version includes commentaries, bloopers, deleted scenes and features about the show's conclusion, heroes' journey and "flash sideways" narrative. Plus, a "new chapter" about the island. The Blu-ray comes with all these plus a "Lost University: Masters Program" feature.

For the hardcore "Lost" fan with plenty of bucks to spend, the Complete Collection is not to be missed. Expect to pay, though: Around $150 for the DVD version, and 200 clams for the Blu-ray.

In addition to all 121 episodes, it includes the bonus material from all six season collections, plus one extra disc of never-before-seen footage. And there's toys: A replica of the island, black light, ankh -- even a special edition of the board game played by Jacob and the Man in Black!

Show: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars