"Resident Evil: Retribution" Review

"Resident Evil: Retribution"

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson

Starring Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Bingbing Li, Johann Urb, Sienna Guillory

 

RATING

2/10

I don't know what it was that made me want to watch this. I know I skipped out on the last two Resident Evil movies, and perhaps even mildly enjoyed the first one. But for some reason, I was kinda anxious to see what this could deliver. First of all, having grown up with the video games and religiously playing RE:4 (side note: best survival horror game of all time), I could see the movies were trying to be their own thing. I respect that, but for the sake of actually making a decent video game-to-film adaptation, it failed on many levels. And along came "Resident Evil: Retribution" to kick me in the face and remind me why I hated the movie franchise so very much.

 

"Resident Evil: Retribution" apparently picks up where "Afterlife" left off... which I didn't for the life of me even bother to see. Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, is on a sinking oil tanker that is being attacked by the Umbrella corporation. She's shot and dropped in the sea below to die. And what should've ended the franchise at that point simply becomes a tiresome mess of a plot with this film. Alice, after delivering one of the weakest and most idiotic expositions of the Umbrella corporation and the past films, awakes in a home where she is a happy mother to a deaf daughter. For the sake of mocking the character, I'm gonna call her Newt. Don't worry, you'll understand why later. So she's attacked by generic zombies, and suddenly awakes again in another room. (It just pains me to talk about how stupid the movie becomes from now on...) After being held prisoner, she's just given all her weapons and clothing and let free... Yeah... what the f***? Anyway, she's stuck in an underground virtual representation of the world and plenty of capital cities, and has to make it through to survive.

 

Now, let's talk about the good thing(s) about this film: It has some pretty good visual effects... That's pretty much it.

 

Now, let's shred it to pieces. "Retribution" is easily one of the worst movies of the past 20 years. It lacks character development, any real connection to these characters, a coherent story arc, plausibility, exciting pacing, and an actual plot. It happily skips along for two hours with a joyous sense of detachment. Paul W.S. Anderson is a terrible f***ing director who is incapable of drawing audiences into his films. He reminds me of a really douchey magician who doesn't ask for volunteers from the audience and instead gives them smug grins and tells them to watch the magic happen, even if the magic is utter crap or in this case, entirely in slow-motion. Literally every single action sequence in this film is slow-motion. Every single frame is lagged to show off some "cool" move pulled off by the obviously wire-worked Milla Jovovich. And worst of all, it doesn't even slow down the moves worth slowing down. For example, Alice is fighting a bunch of generic zombies in a hallway, and does a pretty awesome spinning kick upwards. That isn't slowed down at all, but the jump up in the air is... (hits head against a wall). Alice also travels to different "intersections" or domes in this underground virtual building and each zone consists of a few blocks of Tokyo, New York, etc. And in each zone she confronts a monster or zombies, kills them, moves onto another zone. As cool as that sounds, you'd just be better off playing the video games... The film is written and directed so blandly and incoherently, you feel as if your brain cells are slowly committing suicide. Milla Jovovich really is tiresome again in this role, and should just do modelling or something. She's not a good actress despite trying very hard to take these films seriously. And Michelle Rodriguez is also present... Good God, she's a terrible actress.

 

Let's also touch upon the supporting cast, which consists entirely of bad actors portraying key characters from the video games. Ada, Leon, Barry... a goddamn disaster of acting talent is what they are. They're worse than the moronic teenagers in horror movies that drink and have sex then get killed off. You don't for one second care who they are or what their initiative is (well, who are we kidding? They got no initiative at all!). Then Paul W.S. Anderson becomes James Cameron for two minutes. Yeah, back to Newt, Alice's "daughter". There's a promising looking creature running around slaughtering everything in sight until he captures Newt and seals her in a caccoon... for no apparent reason at all. Alice tries to save her, then confronts the creature in the most anti-climactic possible way: a shot to the head. Really? They had the entire array of sub-characters unloading rounds of machine gun shells into this creature, but it takes one shot in the head from Alice to kill it? This is a freaking stupid movie! With the whole "caccoon" thing, you could see Anderson was trying to have a throwback to "Aliens", but fails miserably.

 

In the end, I will say "Resident Evil: Retribution" is the worst possible movie any person with half a brain cell could make. Without a plot, motivation, development of any kind, or real suspense, the film feels like an elaborate stretched out special effects extravaganza for Paul W.S. Anderson to impress strippers with. It's a petty excuse for a film that doesn't even try to be anything other than a blatant cash grab while frequently taking a huge dump on the legacy of the video games. This movie is utter garbage of the highest visceral quality.