Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Resident Evil: Retribution

 (2012)**1/2

Resident Evil 5 picks up right where Resident Evil 4 left off (which probably isn't helpful to anyone since you either didn't see RE-4 or, completely forgot what happens in it).  The battle that was teased at the end of RE-4 plays out in reverse slo-mo over the opening credits of part 5 here.  Then, we learn that our protagonist, Alice, is whisked off to some underwater research facility in Northern Russia to be experimented upon.  Alice needs to escape, and thus, we have a movie! 

Of all the Resident Evil films, this one plays out like a video game more than any other.  To escape from the underwater facility, Alice must go through 5 zombie simulation auditoriums that were made to resemble: Tokyo, New York, Suburbia, Berlin, and Moscow.  And that's the movie, Alice fights zombies in 5 levels while clones of previous films' co-stars help hunt her down. Their inclusion was supposed to revie interest in this entry...
These movies are virtually all the same.  The best ones (parts 1,2,4) deserve three stars.  The worst (parts 3,5) deserve two and a half.  The director is very good at putting action sequences together.  Even if they're all matrix-inspired ripoffs, there are some new effects that give them a fresh spin (just with worse musical accompaniment).  The dialogue and storyline are really poor.  A couple scenes in this one played out like a SNL skit, where it's really obvious that the guest stars are just reading the cue cards and trying not to crack up.  The story is getting redundant too.  This may be a spoiler, but, in part 2, Alice gets special powers.  At the start of part 4, she gets them taken away, but can still do absurdly special moves.  Then, at the end of part 5, she gets them back again.  Make up your minds already!

6 comments:

Johnny Sweatpants said...

I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected to, but that mostly had to do with the terrific 3D effects. Also the scene with the Axemen was pretty freakin' spectacular. Are they featured in the other films?

I'd be interested in reading your full reviews of the other installments. Nice work on keeping up with the current movies Trevor! Did you drag your wife to this one too?

Catfreeek said...

Yeah bravo Trevor you have really been on top of the new scene. Nice review.

AC said...

good review of a missable-sounding flick.

Landshark said...

Trevor, do you think we'd need to see these in any order? One of the RE flicks is available on demand right now, and I've been thinking about checking it out. I'm only familiar with the series by having played (and fucking conquered!) the Res Evil: 4 game on Wii (where you get to use the wand as your gun site and shoot a bunch of zombies and monsters).

50PageMcGee said...

it took me a couple weeks to realize it, but did you notice that the guy on the left side of the picture of the blonde who can't act is the original gigolo that rob schneider replaces in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo?

Octopunk said...

No, 50, nobody noticed that.

Good work Trevor! I have aspirations to review this series but you're way ahead of me.

I've seen RE's 1 and 2 which together feature three instances of Milla Jovovich waking up naked and disoriented, which also happens in Fifth Element, which I hope makes her the industry winner in that category.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...