First of all: while it’s possible that this movie borrowed some small amount of plotting from the book that shares its name, I would be hard pressed to name anything besides the title and its attendant premise. This does not make it a bad film, but it certainly makes it a misnamed one. Second of all: I’m probably fast and loose with spoilers here, although none plot-destroying. You’ll see why I didn’t care much about that.

Okay, disclaimers aside, was World War Z in fact a good movie? Almost. It started off pretty solidly by introducing Brad Pitt (who had gotten too old for this shit) and his family, and then immediately dumping them into Run For Your Lives! And then it exposited about how he’s the kind of guy who could help find out how this[1] happened and therefore save humanity, and then blackmailed him into doing it when “saving humanity” was somehow insufficient. Like rich, pretty people don’t know that they are part of what’s being saved? I dunno.

Then he starts globetrotting, picking up clues, narrowly escaping each place he goes to like a non-parodic version of John Cusack, and just when I started to get the impression that his arrival spelt doom for any place he might show up at, the movie kind of trickled out into nothing. I seriously expected another 30 to 60 minutes of plot, until about 5 minutes before the credits rolled.

So, shorter version: cool, albeit stolen and warped, concept; cool execution; terrible payoff. Hot Israeli soldiers, though.

[1] The zombie apocalypse, obvs.