So, after the unexpectedly entertaining 'The Undead/Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood!' and 'War of the Dead', I was hoping to make it three for three. I guess I was asking for too much from the fifth installment of the Resident Evil movie franchise.
We follow on from the last film, where Alice (Milla Jovovich) and co are attacked by Umbrella, lead by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory). Alice is captured and wakes up in an Umbrella facility, where she is rescued by Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) and, bizarrely, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). Wesker has sent Wong to rescue Alice and has also sent another team, consisting of Barry Burton (Kevin Durand), Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb), that Luther guy (Boris Kodjoe) from the last film, and a few others I don't really care about).
And, let's be honest, the film immediately hits a brick wall with the opening credits. It shows the battle between Alice's group and the Umbrella soldiers, in reverse, in slow motion. I admit it did actually look good when Alice was in the water, but then it continued, and continued, and continued. While it was good to see Alice get her arse kicked for once, to remind us that she is, in fact, depowered, apparently, but really, this could have been done a lot better. Especially since after the slow motion of the battle in reverse, Alice does her usual "My name is Alice. I worked for the Umbrella Corporation..." speech that she has done since 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse'. Okay, this is the fifth, the FIFTH, film in the franchise, do you really think by this point that the people who have stuck with the film series have forgotten what has happened? And then, after all of that, the battle scene is shown once again, in the right order, but sped up. The scene which the audience really wanted to see, has now been ridiculed. Basically this is blatant time wasting (And I will be mentioning that a LOT throughout this review).
And that's the main problem with this film, it's BORING. Seriously, when I went to see this, when one of the action scenes ended, I heard members of the audience YAWN. And this was the middle of the afternoon. Much of the film is dragged on, mainly through slow motion and unnecessary scenes. Mainly the slow motion. While in past films the slow motion was effective or somewhat effective, here, it's used pretty much at every given opportunity, which quickly becomes tiresome.
Along with that, we have to remember that Alice is no longer superhuman. So why is she superhuman?! She does jumps which she shouldn't be able to do, she's somehow fast enough to combat multiple zombies (Who have evolved from slow zombies to fast zombies) and then catches a gun clip that was thrown in the air, she shouldn't be able to do this!
Oh right, hold on, after the battle scene at the start, we see Alice wake up in a suburban neighborhood (Which turns out to be Racoon City) with her husband Todd (Oded Fehr) and their daughter Becky (Aryana Engineer), before they are attacked by what appears to be Las Plagas infected (I'll come back to this in a minute). They also meet up with (Good) Rain (Michelle Rodriguez). I'll admit I really did like this sequence, it's how modern day zombie films should be done. But this is ruined because this was obviously pointless, and only serves to waste even more time.
And it just raises so many questions. It's revealed that the suburban scene was a simulation. I'll explain from the beginning. Do you remember the Red Queen from the first 'Resident Evil' film? Well, apparently Umbrella somehow recovered her (Don't ask me how, the team they sent in the second film were torn to shreds, and the Red Queen was probably wiped by the EMP burst from the nuke strike). Umbrella put her in charge of the main facility, for some reason (Seriously, the last facility she was in charge of she killed everyone, is that really the best kind of computer to put in charge?), and now the Red Queen has taken over and is waging war against humanity. She still runs simulations however in order to, as Wesker says, to learn about the bio-weapons and how to control them. Firstly, WHAT?! She apparently does control them! Or how is she waging war on humanity with them?
Secondly, these are simulations, HOW CAN THEY HURT THE MAIN CHARACTERS? The infected and others, I'll come to in point three, but everything else? Where do all the cars come from? Basically everything, even the slightest detail, Umbrella happens to have stored away somewhere, and it's put onto the test arenas every so often.
Thirdly, these simulations are done by clones, and the Red Queen uses past dead characters as basic models (Except Alice), including Rain, Carlos (Again, Oded Fehr), One (Colin Salmon), and J Pop Girl (Mika Nakashima, because apparently acting like a tree impressed Paul W.S. Anderson and Jovovich). This now raises further questions, namely, why doesn't the Red Queen just simply make multiple teams of One, Rain, and Carlos to take on Alice and Wong? Why use those characters at all? Did Anderson run out of actors who were willing to take part in his films?
Fourth point, why is the Red Queen here?! Again, how did Umbrella recover her? And doesn't Anderson remember her objective in the first film? There, her objective was containment of the infected, the Red Queen was trying to SAVE humanity, why does she now want to destroy it? Is it that the infected are now 99% of Earth's population so the Red Queen decides killing humanity is easier? We are literally not told why the Red Queen changes her objective. I can only guess being shut down twice in 'Resident Evil' screwed up her programming, and she's royally pissed off that Alice killed her twice.
And remember her line from the first film "You are all going to die down here"? I'll be honest, I think that line is brilliant in the first film. We the audience know what she means already, but the characters don't, they're unnerved by that line, that line effectively signals the chaos and death that will now follow the characters. And so this film uses that line AGAIN in 'Retribution', where it feels out of place and stupid.
You know what, fifth point, WHY IS WESKER A GOOD GUY?! I'm sorry, but in the last film Wesker was trying to eat Alice, and in the games, his endgame was to basically wipe out most of humanity with Uroboros, only leaving those worthy (A.K.A. the survivors). Why does he now support Alice? How come his little condition is never mentioned? Did a case of exploding helicopter all he actually needed to stop the T-Virus from taking over his body? I can only guess Wesker has something big planned to the sixth film. Yes there's (Most likely) going to be a sixth film.
Then there's the fact that characters from the last film are disregarded., namely Chris and Claire Redfield, and K-Mart. No, wait, no K-Mart is a good thing, I hope she stays gone. But where are the Redfield's? I can only assume they were either killed by Umbrella's assault at the start of the film, or they were captured and were in the same facility as Alice. In which case *SPOILERS* they're now dead, since Wesker's team flooded the base.
In fact, the returning characters aren't really given that much depth. When Alice was told that the Red Queen had taken over, she was more concerned with the fact that a computer was now calling the shots, rather than questioning the fact that the Red Queen was back. Then she doesn't really care when she sees her deceased former colleagues back; she does say Rain hasn't changed, but that's it. What about Carlos? Didn't you and he have a thing in 'Resident Evil: Extinction'? What about One? You had great respect for him in 'Resident Evil'.
*SPOILERS* Alice comes across Becky, the daughter of her cloned self. Becky thinks Alice is her mum, and film apparently decided that it needed to make Alice feel like a mum. And when Alice and Becky come across the cloning facility, Becky says "You're not my mummy are you?", Alice replies "I am now"...WAS THIS MEANT TO BE CHARMING? NO! It was creepy and disturbing! It now feels like you're kidnapping her rather than helping her!
And Las Plagas is not a zombie! It's a parasite! It makes the host highly aggressive and mutates them, but they're NOT zombies! It is not an evolved form of the T-Virus! In fact, there is a shot of the T-Virus structure, and guess what? It's in the shape of a 'T'. It is not in the shape of a 'T', it's called the T-Virus because it's supposed to create the Tyrant. I admit though, those points about Las Plagas and the T-Virus are nitpicking issues.
Back to the film, the acting is half arsed. Basically nearly everyone looked like they couldn't be bothered to give any effort whatsoever in this, primarily Salmon, Li, Rodriguez, and Fehr. Even Jovovich was struggling at times, I think even she's getting bored with her character being stronger than God by this point. The only people who actually managed to lift this film were Durand and Guillory. Durand was really entertaining as Barry Burton, and even has one of the film's few good moments.
But while Sienna Guillory was really good in this, why did her costume basically advertise her only weakness? Wouldn't it have been a good idea to, I don't know, hide the mind controlling device? Then again it gave an excuse to show Guillory's cleavage, so I'm not complaining. And I will say this, the film does give us an eagerly awaited match between Alice and Jill. *SPOILERS* It is also good to see Alice get her arse kicked by Jill for once.
I will say something good for this film, the effects were really good. Okay they were a bit hit and miss for Las Plagas, but the giant Licker was exceptionally great. And seeing the bullets fly back into the guns at the start were really spectacular. Okay, the visuals in this film were stunning, I will give them that.
So, to conclude, this film is awful. This film is just a confusing, boring mess. Basically, 'Resident Evil' was really good in my opinion, 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' was really only saved by having Nemesis, and while the other films were quite bad, at least they were still watchable, at least they were still somewhat entertaining. This installment, was sooooo stupid. The story is dull and confusing, the acting is overall wooden, the dialogue is moronic, the characters seem to have no idea what side they're on, the slow motion is overused and stupid, and the action scenes are just soooo boring. I'll give the film some good bits, but really, this film just has no idea what it's doing.
The plot...mmmmmeh. I would say it's good, but the problem is it feels like the film restarts multiple times, namely because the film changes its cast about every twenty minutes. And that also leads to a problem, namely you don't feel invested in the film because you don't really learn much about the characters.
The acting meanwhile, was really bad. I mean, every single actor basically portrayed their characters in the same way, and this lead to not really knowing which character was which, even if you were paying attention. I suppose Osbeck was slightly better than the others, but, really, there isn't much to go on. The same can be said for lines of dialogue which are bad or have no point, one example being when the group of soldiers had a little argument on how to pronounce 'For Sale' in a French accent.