Tuesday 25 February 2014

World War Z

* * * * 

*warning some spoilers*

A rare movie for me - 5 stars!! This has just the right amount of action, suspense and kept me on the edge of my seat for 2 hours; there wasn't really any 'this would be a good time for a toilet break' moments. It was kinda like an extreme version of The Walking Dead (to which I am somewhat addicted) - zombies taking over the world due to the spread of some virus, except unlike most zombie films, these ones can *run*.... Which makes more sense, and makes it more scary!



I don't remember any bad language being used, and there are no dodgy sex scenes or anything, so it's a good movie to watch with your family (though perhaps not for young children as there is some violence of course with the zombies) and it has a good storyline - something which a lot of action movies seem to lack; just the right balance of action and acting for me.

It was also cool how they filmed some of it in Jerusalem (I'm sure I recognised some of the streets they were being chased down having been there twice myself) and interesting to see the use of the 'apartheid wall' in the movie - useful for keeping out zombies as well as suicide bombers apparently... or not! Totally pointless it turned out to be just like in real life... I hear the movie has received some criticism from pro-Palestinian activists for showing the wall in a positive light and somehow drawing a parallel between zombies and Palestinians, but I didn't see it like that when I was watching as there are both Palestinians and Israelis inside the wall together. A scene of unity between the two groups is portrayed as though they put their differences aside in order to survive the zombie attacks. Surely this is a good thing?

It has also been criticised for making the 'apartheid wall' into a symbol of peace rather than one of conflict as it is in reality, or that Israel is put in an unfairly positive light in the movie as it is one of the only 2 countries to survive the zombies. Again however, I saw it in a different light. The only other country to survive the zombie attacks was North Korea because they pulled out the teeth of all their people! So to my mind Israel is being compared to this - only countries with harsh regimes and military force are surviving, I don't think they are necessarily saying this is a good thing! And the failure of the wall to keep out the zombies in the movie, yet the success of dealing with them in another way (which I won't give away but it doesn't involve extreme Israeli-style force) just shows that these strategies do not bring peace. What do you guys think?

No comments:

Post a Comment