Movie Review: Resident Evil: Retribution

Resident Evil: Retribution a.k.a Resident Evil V: Retribution
Screen Gems A Sony Pictures Entertainment Company, Constantin Film International, Davis Films/Impact Pictures, Capcom Company, Germany, Canada, USA, France, 2012.

Alice (Milla Jovovich) was stripped of her superpowers in the previous movie, not that it makes much difference. As a zombie-killer she is still unmatchable. She and other survivors are attacked by former friend Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory). Alice wakes up with a new hair-do and a family. Then the zombie apocalypse starts again and she finds herself trapped in Umbrella-company's underground simulator facility. Spy/thief Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) helps her escape by orders from Max Headroom impersonator Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). Also Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb) and other pals are coming to rescue Alice. 

Alice

Overeager Milla fans

 

I liked the first "Resident Evil" movie and also the second movie had is good parts. After that the series just ceased to pretend that it had anything to do with the original game universe. In the original games the original scenarios were about bioweapon tests gone haywire in limited buildings or towns making the exploration of the areas scary. With global zombie apocalypse the series kind of painted itself into a corner as the suspense of the first parts was lost and replaced with big action scenes. The overblown action scenes do not really have much suspense or horror as Alice always pwns the enemies, with or without superpowers.

AdaWong

Leon S. Kennedy

Bad Rain

The plot feels like a rehash of best of scenes the previous "Resident Evils" with ideas from "Aliens" mixed in. It feels also a recap episode of the previous films and an introduction to the next Resident Evil movie. There is not much story, the characters just move from one arena to another and fight zombies and Umbrella thugs. 

Important characters from the games Ada Wong and Leon S. Kennedy are introduced into the series with minimal characterization. They just appear from somewhere and feel like minimal homages to the games. Compared to the witty hero that he was in animated "Resident Evil: Damnation" I can not believe how generic Leon feels in the live action films. Thanks to cloning technology Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) who died in the first movie returns as different incarnations: the good and the bad but the zombie Rain was cut from the film. Overall the dialogue is dull and underdeveloped characters are just reading their lines. The characters from the games and previous films appear, some of them die but nobody cares. Even as a video game it would feel weak as the video games nowadays manage to have more interesting and rootable character characters.The action scenes are heavily CGI-enhanced and couple of the effects look surprisingly cheap. Hey, the car in the metro tunnel scene gave me flashback that I was watching some film made by The Asylum.

The worst part of the series.

Rating: Very bad 

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez, Aryana Engineer, Bingbing Li, Boris Kodjoe, Johann Urb, Robin Kasyanov, Kevin Durand, Ofilio Portillo, Oded Fehr, Colin Salmon, Shawn Roberts, Toshio Oki, Takato Yamashita, Mika Nakashima, Megan Charpentier, Ave Merson-O'Brian, Raymond Olubawale, Kevin Shand, Razaaq Adoti, Kim Coates, Martin Crewes, Iain Glen, Sandrine Holt, Thomas Kretschmann, Ali Larter, Spencer Locke, Eric Mabius, Wentworth Miller, James Purefoy, Norman Yeung, Anna Bolt, Indra Ové, Joseph May, Heike Makatsch, Liz May Brice, Pasquale Aleardi, Sally Cahill, Amanda Dyar, Reese Riley, Chris Sullins, Vaja 

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson