First Hit: Despite the unrealistic plot and 2 hour length, it was very entertaining. First off, the buzz in the trades and in reviews is the argument of whether this film is or isn't a zombie movie. Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) is introduced as a family man who makes pancakes for his kids. He’s not working and left his old job by choice. He's taking his family on a day trip when all of a sudden there is an outbreak of people who are being attacked and bit by people infected with an unknown virus. These newly bit people take on the same virus behaviors in about 12 seconds, which in turn create more infected people running around biting people. These infected people surround Lane's car so Pitt highjacks a motor home and they hightail it out of the city. What we learn about these infected people is they stand around moving little, in a zombie mode, until there is noise mostly human made noise depicting humans doing something and upon hearing the noise, they rush around in a crazy way to find, bite and kill the nearest humans. The rushing around is very un-zombie like. It didn’t appear that these creatures don't eat the un-infected humans, they just bite and kill them to pass on the virus. This is all done very effectively, however a weakness in the film is that Lane's character, without explanation or supporting information, as some very important United Nations guy who… solves problems? The film never lets the audience know his who Lane is and what is his background story. He’s not a doctor, researcher, but someone who has this undefined power to be important and to fix something that is wrong. Despite this lack of background, Pitt does a good job being this person. Of course they figure out how to conquer the virus and for the movie goer, the ride is enjoyable.
Pitt is very good as someone who figures out how to conquer the virus problem even though the script provides no background of who he is and what his capabilities include. Mireille Enos (as Karin Lane) is good in a minor and caring role as Gerry Lane’s wife. Daniella Kertesz (as Israeli soldier Segen) is good as the soldier who helps Lane figure out how to stop the virus. Matthew Michael Carnahan and Drew Goddard wrote a good screen play but it lacked context and background for the main character. Marc Forster directed this well enough. Some of the CGI effects of people climbing up very tall walls looked very much like how ants accomplish this when driven.
Overall: This film was entertaining despite little context to ground it.