World War Z (2013)

While I generally liked the musical choices they made for this movie, I've got to say that they totally passed up a golden opportunity to play "Channel Z" by the B-52s. Seriously though, teh music was great. One of the very first things I noticed about this movie is the appropriate music. Playing the didonent chords when teh zombiues come is brilliant and I think has the power to be iconic like the the Jaws theme.
I know that as a fringe member of the hipster community - friend of hipsters, but obviously not one since I use the term, and have you met me? Not very hipsterish - that I am not supposed to like this movie because it is so different from the book and perhaps even counter-thetical to i's premise. But come on, Brad Pitt as a sexy former United Nations investigator and sexy doctors at the World Sexy Organization, I mean World Health Organization. How could I not watch this? I suppose I could have watched it just to see how different it was and report on that. But here's my big (former) secret: I did not read World War Z. I tried, I really, really did. I had it checked out and renewed. I would get through the first couple of chapters and then wham! Full stop. Eventually I decided to read the final chapter and then work my backwards to the beginning at random intervals, but that didn't work either.
So, I just waited for the movie to come out. I know that there was a fair bit of drama with the production of this film, like Pitt firing the producers and re-shooting the whole end fo the movie. A big enough deal that they announced that they had blown so much money that there was no way to recap their losses. But, I can't tell you how it's different from the original ending. Nor from the book. And since I've already mentioned that I can't compare it with the book, we're left just looking at this through the lense of zombie movies.
The zombie movie that this film is most reminiscent of is Resident Evil, just without the stlightly too advanced tech and zombies that mutate into even worse creatures. The zombies are fast, visoous and turn quickly. World War Z goes for a more realistic response than Resident Evil did, but we could very easily find out in WWZII that patient zero was at the Raccoon City site.
There were some things in thsi movie that you don't normally see, like someone committing suicide onscreen ("Luke, you're our last hope..!" "Fuck that shit," BAM! "No, there is another, a sister, well a guy with long hair.") You also rarely see an amputation on screen, yet we see the Israeli gal going from bitten to being called 'Righty' in a heart beat. I don't know if either were necessary to the story, you could just have had the doctor succumb to the zombie horde, but the suicide does drive home the point that it is hopeless to try and figure it out.
The outcome of the movie is fairly predictable and not quite how I would have done it, but worked. And there are scenes that are predictable, like the satellite phone incident and the way the captain of the air craft carrier behaves. But none of these are enough to take away from this film.
I have no idea how awesome a movie that actually followed the book would be. It might be the best zombie movie ever, or it might just be confusing. But, I know that the movie they made is very good and worth watching.

World War Z on IMDb