Paul W.S. Anderson's RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION
Movie Review by Dennis D. McDonald
I really enjoyed the previous Resident Evil movie so I looked forward to this one. I decided to see it in the theater and spent the extra $4 for a 3D ticket. Was it worth it?
Definitely. This is one of those movies, going in, where you know exactly what you’e going to get: well produced, non-stop action, beautifully photographed, with Milla Jovovich on screen almost 100% of the time. Who could ask for more?
OK, the story is not original. That’s not the point. The movie’s architecture is designed to get Alice through as many interlocking adventures (read: fight scenes) as possible while exploring a variety of different environments. That is expertly accomplished as we careen through Moscow, New York, Suburbia, the Arctic Circle, and the biggest underground nuclear submarine pen you’ve ever seen.
The movie has apparently been produced to appeal to non-U.S. audiences and it shows with the great variety of settings, all courtesy of high-quality CGI. You even get to see how an outrageous car chase scene in Moscow ends up in one of that city’s fancy subway stations.
One nice touch is a recurring “holographic” view of the interlocking environments underground that Alice and her chums traverse. It helps keep us oriented, map-wise, sort of like the holographic mapping of the underground spaceship complex in Prometheus.
The movie starts with a bang: a massive reverse-playing shipboard battle pitting Alice’s allies against the invading “black helicopter” hordes of the Umbrella Corporation. Superbly choreographed, this event takes up right after the last film. But we move quickly elsewhere and see Alice underground being subjected to sonic torture in a huge white vertical jail that, naturally, has a huge Umbrella Corporation logo on the middle of the floor.
We also get to see Alice wake up in a suburban home with a family where all normalcy is quickly shattered by a massive zombie attack complete with car crashes, burning helicopters, and lots of gunfire.
You can’t take this movie seriously, but that’s not the point.
Movie review copyright (c) 2012 by Dennis D. McDonald
