Resident Evil: Retribution

After so many installments, it is getting harder and harder to overlook some basic problems with the Resident Evil franchise.  With the fifth (I know!) volume, Resident Evil: Retribution, I have to point out upfront what has ruined my suspension of disbelief: I have a hard time buying into an international evil organization, hell-bent on ruining the world that manages to keep finding glove-tight leather outfits for Milla Jovovich to kick ass in.  We're four movies into a global zombie apocalypse, and they still have someone working a bondage/tailoring shop?  Sure, it's obviously a solid investment when the zombie apocalypse comes a-knocking --- What would Milla wear, otherwise?  Capris? --- but you think somebody would at least brag about having the foresight for this eventuality.  If this was my movie, that would be the only thing discussed in the trailer.

***DISCLAIMER: The plot of Resident Evil: Retribution is pretty damn ridiculous, so forgive me if I simplify or gloss over some of the finer points in this plot summary***

When last we left Alice (Milla Jovovich), she was on an aircraft carrier, about to take on the forces of the evil Umbrella Corporation.

This picture perfectly encapsulates all Resident Evil plots

The next thing you know, Alice has woken up to an idyllic suburban life, where she has a husband and a child.  But then zombies happen.  Again.  The next thing you know (again), Alice wakes up in an unnecessarily bright and clean room, wearing only a small towel.  Why a towel?  Did she slip and hit her head coming out of the shower?  Are her hot pants at the cleaner?  Is this just a subtle clue that the zombie virus began with mildew accumulating in Milla's towel because she can't be bothered to hang it up like a grown damn woman, and I sure as shit don't need to keep picking up after her --- if she really respected me, she wouldn't be so thoughtless in the shared space of our bathroom, right?

Stained-glass floors.  Classy touch, evil corporation.

Actually, that stupid idea is only slightly less reasonable than the shoulder shrug reasoning of the actual script.  Although having the entire Resident Evil franchise be the concussed dream of Alice, after a bathroom-related head injury, would be pretty hilarious.  Anyway, the villain of the last four films, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), has taken the time to bleach his hair.  Almost as importantly, Wesker tells Alice that he is no longer part of the evil Umbrella Corporation.  Now he wants to help humanity, which makes as much sense as anything else in this series.  It seems that The Umbrella Corporation has been taken over by a virtual intelligence called the Red Queen.

Note: the worst CGI in this series is for a computer-generated character

Umbrella and the Queen have captured Alice and cloned the crap out of her and a lot of other people (many we have seen in previous Resident Evil movies), running simulation after simulation, and using Alice's unique physiology (I think) to perfect the zombie disease.  Wesker wants to help Alice escape the of-course-it's-underwater Umbrella station she is in, so he sends in some help, in the form of Ada Wong (Bingbing Li).  All the two of them have to do is fight their way across three city-sized zombie experiments and meet up with Wesker's extraction team. 

That sounds easy enough

There are a lot of returning characters to Resident Evil: Retribution, but the acting is at the level the series is known for (hint: the bar is not set high).  This is actually Milla Jovovich's best work in the series to date, as she not only kicks ass and looks sexy, but she also manages to deliver a few one-liners.  It's not impressive work by most standards, but for an actress as wooden as Jovovich, it is worth noting.  How about the rest of the cast?  Well, there are some newcomers.  Bingbing Li is pretty and wore some fantastically inappropriate clothes for fighting zombies, but it all of her dialogue was dubbed over in post-production.  And it looked like it, too.

An evening dress is a solid choice for outrunning zombies, right?

Aryana Engineer was adequate as the completely useless little girl that Alice took with her, but she was less of a character and more of a plot device.  Johann Urb played Leon Kennedy, the main character from the fifth RE video game, and he has a little less characterization than your average video game character; in case his haircut bothers you, that was also inspired by the game.  Kevin Durand also plays a character from the games.  While his role in the movie seemed somewhat minor, I thought Durand did a solid job as an unnecessarily macho character.  The returning cast sees Sienna Guillory, Shawn Roberts, and Boris Kodjoe survive the last film, with Michelle Rodriguez, Oded Fehr, and Colin Salmon having their now-dead characters cloned, with Fehr and Rodriguez doing double duty as both "good" and "bad" clones. On the whole, there is less "acting" in this movie than there is "shouting until something explodes," but that is to be expected.  Nobody (except for Li) was embarrassingly bad, but this is a movie about a supermodel who fights zombies in a leather bodysuit --- good acting was never in the cards.

Thankfully, "posing with weapons" was

Luckily, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson was well aware of that fact, and made a movie that played to both the franchise's and his own strengths: CGI action sequences.  If you're looking for ninety minutes of mindless action sequences, Resident Evil: Retribution may be the film for you.  Anderson has a knack for making Jovovich look like a formidable action hero, and his production of action scenes is some of the smoothest in the business right now.  That doesn't make up for his shortcomings as a screenwriter, but at least he's not spending a lot of time trying and failing to have these characters force emotions or a lot of hammy jokes.  

Although a "women driving" line would have been good here

After watching this film with Danny O'D, we both reached the same conclusion with regards to Paul W.S. Anderson's talents: it's not that he's a good director or anything, but it is nice that he keeps making action movies for Milla Jovovich to be a sex object in.  She's not exactly old here, but how many other 37-year old actresses have this kind of opportunity to kill fake things and be ogled by audiences in genuinely profitable films?  The answer, obviously, is "not enough."  Hollywood has failed to generate a new generation of dumb action heroes as Stallone and Schwarzenegger have aged into irrelevance, so why not make some scripts for aging (by Hollywood standards) beauties that may or may not have acting talent?  Just retool an old Chuck Norris movie for someone like Jennifer Love-Hewitt or Jenny McCarthy and have them fight Communist zombie ninjas.  How hard is that?  It's obviously working for Kate Beckinsale.

Note: I would also watch Michelle Rodriguez fighting Nazi alien terrorists

Okay, so Resident Evil: Retribution isn't a legitimately good movie.  How is it in terms of action movies, or at least the other Resident Evil movies?  The action certainly looks good in Retribution, and there is an awful lot of it.  But there is also a lot of stupid plotting, despite the fact that this movie feels like an hour and a half of mindless action.  Did this story need to keep tabs on Leon Kennedy and the other gun-toting "characters" that were meeting up with Alice?  Absolutely not.  Did we need Alice to care for a child?  Lord, no.  How about changing the villain in the series out of absolutely nowhere?  That was only slightly less stupid than filling the cast with recognizable actors who were "only" clones, and therefore perfectly expendable.
  Look, the less attention you pay to this horrible excuse for a story (example: whatever happened to Ali Larter and Wentworth Miller after the last movie, anyway?), the better off you are.

More of this, less of deaf children

However, even glossing over the plot doesn't make this film a must-see.  The best action movies have cool heroes doing cool things that kill bad guys.  The action scenes in Retribution are very smooth and generally look pretty good and lots of bad guys die, but these scenes don't always make a lot of sense.  That wouldn't be a huge knock on the movie, but Alice is a dull heroine.  When you add zero charisma to nonsensical action and a terrible plot, you get a sub-par movie.  Still, this is a movie about a zombie-killing woman in a vacuum-sealed catsuit; it may not be great, but it at least plays up what it does well. 

Within the Resident Evil series, I would say that Retribution is slightly worse than Resurrection, but still a little better than Apocalypse.  Given the $220 million Resident Evil: Retribution has made, it looks like we'll be seeing a sixth Milla RE movie soon.  With any luck, it will be a little less idiotic and a little more sensational.  And then, most likely, we'll see a reboot two years later.

Mortal Kombat

It's time again for another foray into the realm of video game movie adaptations, this time requested by my friends in Big Dog Eat Child (or one of them, anyway).  Despite growing up in the dawn of the violent video game era, and despite spending several dollars in quarters playing the arcade game, I had never sat through Mortal Kombat before.  Well, at least not that I can remember; there are some hazy movie watching nights in college.  My favorite story about Mortal Kombat as a movie experience involved an old roommate of mine, who went to see this movie in the theater on opening night.  After the final preview ended and the lights went totally dim, someone in the audience stood up and bellowed "Moooortal Kombaaat!!!"  And the theater erupted in laughs and applause.  There aren't a whole lot of audiences that reward funny/obnoxious behavior like that*, but it really makes sense with this movie.  If you're not familiar with the MK battle cry, this commercial for the first game will clue you in:


Mortal Kombat the movie follows the general plot and format of the video game.  A group of humans (mortals) are chosen by a god and a sorcerer to fight for Earth in a series of one-on-one fights (kombat) to determine whether or not an extra-dimensional warlord can invade our world.  The fighters for good are a former monk, Liu Kang (Robin Shou), a movie star that is clearly not modeled after Jean-Claude Van Damme, Johnny Cage (Linden Ashby), and a tough as nails lady cop, Sonya Blade (Bridgette Wilson).

Sadly, not in this movie.

Why are these three picked?  Um.  Cuz?  On the side of eee-veel, we have the vaguely foreign and inexplicably cyborg-faced Kano (Trevor Goddard), the freeze-powered Sub-Zero, and the peculiar Scorpion, whose super power involved having a fleshy slit in his palm.  No wonder teenage boys like his character!

Least erotic Fleshlight ever.

After the good guys have had their way with these bad guys, they have to fight the sub-boss, Goro.  Goro has four arms and costume effects taken directly from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.  He also is poorly designed, if only because four arms should lead to four pectoral muscles and not just extra abs.

If the good guys beat Goro, then they get to fight the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa).  Apparently, fighting games and movies are kind of like being in a union; to take on the big boss, you gotta pay your dues first.  Will the heroes of Earth win, or will they fail and allow the destruction of this dimension?  Or will they win and then see a set-up for a sequel?  The suspense probably will have you on the edge of boredom.

The acting in this film is obviously pretty bad, but it wasn't annoying.  Why not?  The director wisely chose to fill as much time as he could with action sequences, even when they are not particularly necessary.  When it is given screen time, the acting is awkward and grossly unnatural --- that's why most of the non-fight scenes have dialogue that consists primarily of quips.  The only actors that really stood out to me were Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Christopher Lambert.  Tagawa did a great job playing an over-the-top villain, thanks in part to his ability to make awesome facial expressions.

Tagawa isn't a talented actor, by any means, but he nails this character.  In a movie with a puddle-deep plot, the bad guy just has to be obviously bad.  Mission accomplished!  Christopher Lambert --- the most famous cast member, even now --- is awful, though, even by his standards.  Somehow, the filmmakers took a video game character that was clearly designed after the Three Storms in Big Trouble in Little China

and transformed him into a white guy with a funny accent.  I would forgive Lambert's always limited acting skills if he had any action scenes in the movie (he doesn't) or if his funny accent was racist (it's not).  Nope, Lambert was cast for his acting ability and star power.  That might please the fans of Highlander --- all four of you --- but the rest of us want a little more from our headlining actors than a raspy voice (except, inexplicably, at the end) and inappropriately timed chuckles.

Someone, please behead this immortal.

The tag line for this movie is "Nothing in this world has prepared you for this."  Personally, I think the promo posters took this movie a little too seriously.  That's not surprising, since the director, Paul W.S. Anderson, has a habit of making silly action movies that are blissfully unaware of their quality.  I will give Anderson credit; this movie has a lot of kombat in it (the "k" is for "kicks to the face").  Most of the fights include some decent hand-to-hand sparring.  Every so often, though, he gives the audience a wide shot and we see just how slow and choreographed the fight scenes are.  That doesn't bother me, since I laugh at things like that, but it's an odd choice in a movie that wants the audience to enjoy the fight scenes that take up most of the film.

It's probably easier to focus on the things this movie does right than what is wrong with it.  The 90s-techno theme song and the random shouts of "Mortal Kombat" are awesomely cheesy.  I loved that every punch and kick had a sound effect.  Most of the cannon fodder villains used exaggerated grunts instead of dialogue and --- given the quality of the script --- that was the right choice.  This is a movie that knew it needed a fight every few minutes to maintain interest, and it does its best to make that happen.

It's still a comically bad movie, though.  Any time your hero has a mullet is a clue that your movie is aiming for the "so bad it's good" market.  For a movie with so much fighting, it sure seems like half of the actors are waiting to get punched or kicked; there was a sequence where Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonja took out a whole room of Hammer pants-wearing thugs with kicks to the face.  I realize those guys are the underlings, but shouldn't one of them have a defense for that?  Like ducking, maybe, or just putting their arms in front of their face?  The special effects are awfully mid-90s, which means that they weren't very impressive; the CGI used for Reptile was the worst, though.  And the stupidity, oh the stupidity...

• Shang Tsung, the main villain, prepares to fight wearing...a vesty pantsuit?
• Every person that fights Sub-Zero waits until he has summoned his cold energy (or whatever) before they attempt to hit him.
• Kano has manscaped his chest hair, and it looks suspiciously like that of Zangief from rival game series Street Fighter.
• Scorpion's dialogue includes his in-game catch phrases "Get over here" and "C'mere."  It also includes "Get down here" and "Welcome," using the same voice.  I'm fine with the first two lines, if only because they make sense in the film.  The others...well, if he was trying to coax a cat out of a tree or followed "Welcome" with "Can I get you a drink?" they might seem a little less silly.
• Sadly, the only black man in Mortal Kombat, and is not a character from the game, is used to show how tough the bad guys are.  Nobody saw that coming.
• Every time Goro fights, these two greasy observers look deeply into each others eyes and scream "Gorooo!!!"  I think we're supposed to assume that they retire after the fight for some sweaty lovemaking.
• Why is Sonja in this movie?  She winds up being a damsel in distress instead of some sort of martial arts bad-ass.  I do like that the bad guys that kidnap her take the time to tease out her hair and change her into an ugly dress.
• Here's the scene: you are about to attack a known shape-shifting bad guy.  He shape-shifts into your dead brother.  Obviously, this is a trick because you know your brother is dead and because you saw the villain shift.  Every second spent not punching the bad guy is an insult to everyone's intelligence.

By any meaningful metric that measures film quality, Mortal Kombat is just plain dumb.

But, despite the slew of obvious awfulness in this movie, I feel pretty certain that it is as good as anyone involved in making the film expected.  This might have started out as a high-profile project (at one point, Cameron Diaz was in the cast, and it was rumored that Brandon Lee was set to star, too), but it went to B-movie status the second Christopher Lambert was hired to headline the film.  The direction is poor, the action is mediocre, the script is stupid, with pretty lame one-liners sprinkled throughout.  Then again, this is a movie based on a video game where you have people fight each other to the death, one at a time; who needs acting, directing, or a script?  With that in mind, I find myself curiously entertained by Mortal Kombat.  It's definitely bad, but certainly entertaining, which means a Lefty Gold rating of

* My personal favorite funny/obnoxious loud-thing-said-in-the-theater came from Danny O'D.  We went to a midnight showing of the Japanese anime classic, Akira, and the theater was packed with all sorts of nerds, most of whom were already familiar with the movie.  About thirty seconds into the movie, before any dialogue had been spoken, Dan loudly asked, "Wait, this is a cartoon?!?"  Only two people in the theater laughed, but I almost peed myself.  Good times.

Alien vs. Predator (Extended Cut)

I like it when I can turn my brain off and enjoy a stupid action movie for exactly what it is: big, dumb and fun.  It's even better when the title tells me exactly what to expect --- Alien vs. Predator?  Awesome, I don't even have to wonder what the movie is going to be about.  The only thing better than a "vs." title would be a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie called I Slow-Motion Roundhouse Kick Many Men in the Face.  I happen to be a pretty big fan of both the Predator and Alien franchises, so this movie could (theoretically) be better than a dumb action movie; Alien is a smart thriller, while Predator and Aliens are awesome action movies.  Really, as long as AVP didn't take its cues from Alien: Resurrection, it could stand a chance of actually being good.

...And then the movie begins, and all hope is lost.  Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan) is ice picking her way up a remote frozen mountain when she gets a phone call.  My first reaction was, "You get reception there?  Who is your carrier?"  The caller is Maxwell Stafford (Colin Salmon), and he has a job offer for Alexa.  As she struggles to get to the top of the mountain, Alexa politely refuses the job because she is days away from civilization.  Just then, she reaches the top and Stafford is already there, with a helicopter.  Right there is the first inkling of how dumb this movie will be.  What, you can't wait two minutes for her to get to the top of the ice mountain, you have to call her immediately, Mr. Stafford?  And maybe you shouldn't startle someone on the edge of a cliff covered in ice.  Just a thought.  Jerk.  And wouldn't she have been somewhat aware of a helicopter landing near her?  It's not like she was going to be distracted by the noises of traffic surrounding her.  Whatever.

Stafford works for billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen), who has assembled a diverse team of experts to investigate something unusual.  Alexa is the survival guide, Sebastian (Raoul Bova) is an expert in ancient Egyptians and hieroglyphs, and Graeme (Ewen Bremner) is a mineralogist.  There are some drilling experts and some mercenary soldiers (Tommy Flanagan, Agathe de La Boulaye, and a few others) in the group, as well.  The day before, a heat signature was picked up by one of Weyland's satellites that covers Antarctica; from the satellite images, he has determined that the heat comes from a vast pyramid structure several hundred yards beneath the ice on an island just off the coast of the frozen continent.  Obviously, rich guy wants more toys, so the expedition intends to find the heated object and claim it for himself, humanity, and his multinational communications company.  And, thanks to the expert knowledge of Sebastian, we now know that this pyramid has aspects of all known pyramids --- Egyptian, Peruvian, etc. --- so this could be the world's very first pyramid.  Because an educated archaeologist is willing to make ridiculous claims like that after glancing at some extrapolated images.  Are we sure this isn't based on a true story?

What is taking so long for us to get to the title subject matter?  Aliens?  Predators?  Either would be awesome right about now.  Well, the stupid humans enter the pyramid, only to find that it is all a trap; once they have entered, the pyramid changes the shape of its interior rooms every ten minutes (or whenever it is convenient for the plot).  Why?  Well, we can discuss that later.  The point is that some humans get stuck in a room where they are incapacitated long enough to be impregnated with baby Aliens in their chest.  Then Predators show up and kill all the Aliens as part of their training to become bigger, better Predators.  So, there you have it: Aliens vs. Predators.  And both against humans.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this film is the fact that the basic plot mechanism behind it is based on a scientific theory.  Granted, it's not a widely accepted theory, but it's not something that writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson just pulled out of his butt, either.  The idea is loosely based on Erich von Däniken's book, Chariots of the Gods?, which postulates that ancient pyramids and religions were brought to the Earth by extraterrestrials, who were seen as gods by the primitive humans.  Personally, I find such sloppy pseduo-archaeology offensive to my intelligence, but it's not a bad idea for science fiction.  The movie tweaks it a little bit by making the pyramids a training ground for fledgling Predators as they fought the universe's ultimate prey, Aliens.  It's more complicated that I like in my action movie plots, and it will require a human to learn all this and be in awe, but it's not fundamentally terrible.  Besides, it sets up my favorite line in the whole film; at one point, Sebastian says "This is starting to make sense."  That cracks me up every time, because it must have taken that actor at least a dozen takes to say that with a straight face.

How do you screw up an idea like Aliens being hunted by Predators?  By focusing on the humans.  I'm sorry, Alexa and Sebastian (the film's only vaguely sympathetic characters), but I don't care if you live or die --- as long as your death is awesome, it's all good in my opinion.  "But we need a point of view character that is experiencing these scary monsters for the first time, like the audience."  No, we don't.  There were six other movies with these creatures; I think the movie-going public is pretty well-acquainted with these things.  But that is just a conceptual misstep.  It hurts the movie, yes, but you can still make a decent action flick with this basic story.

But then again, the specifics of the story are ridiculous.  Where to begin...?  If the Predators use Earth as a training ground, why haven't we seen them fighting Aliens on pyramids in the past (let's be generous) 100 years?  The flashback clips show the Predators fighting on some pyramids in what appeared to be Central America, which was heavily populated in pyramid-building times, so it's not like they were relegated to the Antarctic.  And even if they were, why do they need to lure humans there?  Why not kidnap them?  When all you're looking for is a warm body to incubate Alien babies, you don't need to be picky.  Let's just say that the reason humans have not witnessed Predators fighting Aliens in modern times is because they've been doing it under the tundra; why would they even have a pyramid there?  They weren't shy about building pyramids all around the globe.  Why are they bashful now?  And if humans are just walking nurseries for the Aliens, why do the Predators kill some of the humans before they even enter the pyramid?  I don't really care how stupid the core premise of an action movie is, but at least try to be consistent.

Man, analyzing this movie just ticks me off.  While this could have been a genuinely cool movie, it chose to be a dumb action movie.  Okay, I can live with that.  If you're going to gauge this flick by horror movie standards, there are over a dozen kills in this movie, not counting Predators or Aliens.  That's not a bad body count.  The final Predator has some pretty sweet kills, too, so at least one of the bad-ass hunters got a chance to be bad-ass.  And hollowing out an Alien skull to use as a shield?  That was awesome.  And how about the Predator spaceship?  The front of it was shaped like their masks.  I nearly spit all over myself when I first saw that.  It's like Jason Voorhies driving around Crystal Lake in a van with a giant hockey mask on the grill.  Actually, it's better than that --- it's like the Predators are ghetto fabulous winners of "Pimp My Spaceship."

But by focusing on the insignificant humans, who are (by the story's own admission) just cannon fodder, this movie truly fails.  Do you want to see a Rambo movie, told from the point of view of one of the three hundred henchmen Stallone blows the hell out of?  Of course not.  Unless it was a two minute short film, in which case, it could be pretty funny.  The same principle applies here.  I am more than okay with some brainless Alien and Predator kills; this movie has a couple that were pretty good, but the PG-13 rating definitely limits the quality of the its senseless violence.  And by taking the point of view away from the Predators (because, really, I don't think you can tell a story from an Alien POV), the filmmakers guaranteed that this movie would suck.  On the bright side, this movie did fulfill its promise of having Aliens and Predators fight each other.  So, let's review: ridiculous story, acting so inconsequential that I haven't even mentioned it until now, underwhelming action, and the wrong approach to a can't miss idea.  Yep.  That's a bad movie.  Even if it does, technically, live up to its title.

Resident Evil: Afterlife

Say what you will about the Resident Evil series, this fact is undeniable: every movie features a model killing zombies.  That's got to be worth something, right?  After the success of Resident Evil: Extinction, the filmmakers had the chance to make a fourth movie in the franchise.  But what could possibly follow an extinction?  And that is how Resident Evil: Afterlife came to be.

The movie opens with several dozen super-powered Alice (Milla Jovovich) clones attacking the headquarters of the evil Umbrella Corporation and its chairman, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), the man ultimately responsible for turning the world into zombies.  Why are there dozens of Alices?  Why do they have super-powers?  Don't expect to find out much in this movie.  It's not terribly important, though, since Wesker kills all the Alice clones with a bomb and injects Alice Prime with a chemical that makes her a normal human again.  Well, I suppose normal is relative, since her next act is to survive a helicopter crash, uninjured.

Having destroyed the Umbrella Corporation headquarters and presumably killing Wesker (even though he reveals his own super-powers), Alice tries to meet up with her friends from Extinction, at the supposedly zombie infection-free town, Arcadia.  Alice finds and flies a two-seat propeller plane to Arcadia's coordinates in Alaska, but finds only the abandoned remains of her friends' plane.  She then finds Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), her friend from the last movie, crazed and with amnesia.  Together, they look for more surivors down the Pacific coast, eventually landing (barely) on a prison roof in Los Angeles.  There, they meet a motley bunch of survivors, including their leader and former pro basketball player, Luther (Boris Kodjoe), a narcissistic movie producer, Bennett (Kim Coates), and Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), the only man still locked up in the prison.  These survivors have new information about Arcadia: it's not a town, but a boat that travels up and down the Pacific coast, broadcasting its zombie-free atmosphere with its current coordinates, around the clock.  But Alice's plane can only hold one passenger at a time, and she was lucky to land safely once.  How will they ever reach the safety of Arcadia?

Do you really want to know about the acting?  Alright, fine.  Milla Jovovich is fairly pretty and shoots things in the head.  I would criticize her acting, but the script wisely avoids giving her varying emotions, so she actually comes across as reasonably capable here.  Ali Larter, on the other hand, is not terribly talented, and not even a slow-motion, water-soaked action sequence is going to change that.  Boris Kodjoe is reasonably likable and Bennett is thoroughly unlikable --- which means that both played their parts well.  I've seen potatoes have a stronger likeness to real humans than Wentworth Miller, whose archnemesis continues to be his confusion of "raspy voice" with "intensity."  Shawn Roberts gets to do his best Agent Smith impression, but comes across as a generic evil character.  Granted, many of these characters come from the video game franchise (although, oddly enough, not Alice), so their ridiculousness might come from the source material, but I don't care enough to research that thought any further.

I have to admit that writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson does a good job connecting this film to the last chapter in the series.  While I only vaguely remember the first two movies, the third one wasn't bad and included explanations for the Alice clones and (I think) Alice's super-powers.  The opening scene was a nice nod to fans of the film franchise, even if he did effectively negate all of those plot developments only minutes later.  And killing the clones and de-powering Alice made the movie more accessible to casual viewers, which was another smart move.  And that might be the last time you ever see a Resident Evil movie called "smart."


Technically, this is a pretty solid action movie.  The special effects are very good and the primary ass-kickers are women, which is a nice change of pace.  The characters and dialogue are lacking, but that's not too shocking for a video game adaptation, is it?  The problem with this movie is that we have seen it all before.  Zombies with weird mouths that, when they get ready to eat you, look like starfish?  Check.  Weird, starfish-faced dogs?  Check again.  Villain who all but places his hands on his hips to shout "MWA-HA-HA"?  Triple check.  The zombies aren't even a credible threat for most of this movie, if they ever were.  Instead, Wesker and the Umbrella Corporation are the enemy, and their ultimate plot is obnoxiously ridiculous; they are effectively a technological Big Brother, aware of everyone important, anywhere, despite the fact that the world has been falling apart for a few years now.  None of this adds up to a bad movie, exactly, but it's just not very fun to watch.

Is it too much to ask for a single, likable character in my action movies?  I don't think so, and I know that Milla doesn't have the chops to be that character.  This movie is somewhat stupid, but not silly enough to be fun.  It just travels the same path as the last few movies, without the innovations introduced in the third, and arrives at the same end, more or less.  A side note on the ending: when it's all said and done, I don't think they have worked out the logistics (food, water, travel, fuel, etc.) of their actions.  I guess it just boils down to this: I am bored with this franchise.  The movie made nearly $300 million in the box office, so a fifth movie (I know!  Five!) seems inevitable, but I'm not really interested.