Resident Evil Retribution: Review
16 September 2012
Written by David Cantu
Directed once again by Paul W.S Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich, this movie picks up exactly where Afterlife left off. Alice ends up being captured by the Umbrella Corporation and taken to a secret facility where they intend to do further tests on her. Albert Wesker, who no longer is affiliated with Umbrella after the resurgence of The Red Queen, sends in a special operative named Ada Wong to help Alice escape. Its discovered that the facility that she is being held is underwater in the Antarctic and a special group of soldiers (also sent by Wesker) are being sent in to guide them back to the surface. Their only opportunity to survive is to make their way back to the surface and escape the underwater tomb.
I’ve been a fan of most of the Resident Evil films but this one just didn’t make the cut. The start of this movie showed what happened after the previous film ended……but in reverse and in slow motion. Then they showed the whole sequence again in regular speed. This seemed to be nothing more than a time killer and a waste of 10 minutes of the movie. After that Alice proceeded to retell the whole story of the outbreak from the very beginning again. I think after four movies (and seeing the same thing in each one) we as an audience know how everything began and I felt like this was a waste of another 10 minutes. All it felt like was a recycled film. They pulled everything from the previous movies (and stuff from the games) and pulled them together to make this one. Sounds harsh but it’s entirely true. They’ve taken this franchise and turned it into something different. Sure they include characters from the game to make you feel like it’s Resident Evil but it’s definitely not Resident Evil anymore. I LOVE zombie movies and I was really disappointed that the zombies were really not even the focus. They showed up here and there but were quickly defeated and pushed aside. I think the ultimate bad move was the inclusion of military zombies that drove vehicles, shot guns and rode motorcycles. In my opinion they were trying to capitalize on the whole Call of Duty Zombies craze. Every fight scene was in slow motion and had too much wire work. I mean how many times can you see Alice do a triple back flip then kick a zombie in the head and still say “I totally believe that could happen”. The dialogue was horribly written and extremely cheesy. It just made everyone seem so robotic. Anderson just needs to stop making these movies, wait a few years and let the studio reboot it or something. It’s gone too far. It was entertaining in moments but those moments weren’t enough to make this a hit for me. I say watch it if you must but I would call this a “wait for Redbox or Cable” kind of movie. It’s a shame too.