For someone who is a fan of the Resident Evil franchise (not of late sadly) seeing the Resident Evil films could possibly be some of the worst kind of heart-ache we can experience as fans. The films have slowly been deteriorating since the second film, and we've now been given something that doesn't seem to be related at all to the franchise, and just slaps the name on there to make a few quick bucks, but I digress. Let's get to the review, shall we?
Warning, this review contains spoilers. Do not continue if you haven't seen the film, nor do you want it spoiled.
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The film opens up with a gigantic slow-motion, reversal that lasts around 6 minutes and essentially explains what happens between the 4th and 5th films, it could be shorter than 6 minutes, or even longer. All I know was that it was a complete waste of time, and was possibly only added to the film to increase screen time. I could be wrong, but this film is plagued with pointless slow-mo and in the end it just feels like they didn't have enough footage, and decided to slap some slow motion bullshit onto almost everything.
In this horrible "intro" we see the after-match of what happens when Umbrella arrives. If you saw the previous film "Afterlife" you may remember the scene where Jill Valentine, and a bunch of Umbrella soldiers are flying towards the giant ship where Alice, and friends are. This "little" intro basically is used to explain some story, and explain what happens between the films. All I had to say was it felt pointless, and it served little to no purpose in my eyes.
I have a feeling Paul Anderson was sitting in the Director's chair and thought "How can I make this film longer. Oh, a pointless intro and we can slap my slow-mo craving cock all over it." Honestly, it's fucking annoying and just made me annoyed the entire time. I wanted to get to the actual film, not this horrible excuse for an intro.
The worst part? Alice taking out a helicopter from a few hundred feet with shotguns..loaded with coins. Yes, kids. Coins.
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| Alice using her shotguns loaded with coins. |
Either way, after we deal with the annoying reversed, slow-mo bullshit we get the typical "My Name is Alice" speech we've gotten in the past couple of films, and honestly do we really need that speech at the beginning of every RE film now? We know you're Alice, we know you worked for Umbrella. I'm just really glad Paul Anderson didn't waste any of his "talent" writing anymore speeches, and cool/inspiring dialogue. Instead, we get the same boring, old speech about Milla's character saying her name is Alice.
That was sarcasm, if you couldn't catch it. Seriously though, fuck this intro. After the little speech we then get to watch the entire intro sequence, but not in reverse. That's right, we get to watch it normally. So add another few minutes onto that intro, and you eventually come out with a ten minute intro, that just feels bogged down, and purely made to make the film longer.
But come, on really? Making us watch the same sequence like that is completely boring. I was almost ready to leave the theater at this point, and we weren't even 20 minutes into the film.
The best part of this intro? Jill Valentine (played by the smoking Sienna Guillory) zip-lining down in a tigh-ass suit, and shooting off some guns. Probably the best part of the intro, and still the intro sucked ass.
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| Hot. |
Then we get tossed into a rather confusing situation. Alice is in a home and seems to be living a normal life. She has a daughter named "Becky" who seems to be deaf, and she has a husband named Todd. Who is no other than a clone of the late/deceased "Carlos Olivera" (Oded Fehr). It shouldn't take the average person long to realize he's a clone, considering he was killed off in Extinction, and that this situation is not real, and could be part of Alice's subconscious.
This turns out to be false when their home is invaded by "zombies" (those bullshit zombies from Resident Evil 5) and kill Carlos/Todd and then pursue Alice, and Todd through-out the home. Eventually Alice kills two of the zombies, and tries escaping with her daughter, before getting Becky to hide as the now zombiefied Todd/Carlos attacks her. And as a typical/cliched "cliffhanger" it cuts to black.
My only complaint is how did they end up cloning Carlos? Paul Anderson stated in some interviews that the clones were cloned after the deaths of the characters. Here's my question. How the fuck could Umbrella clone Carlos when he was incinerated, leaving nothing of him left in Extinction? It would be impossible to clone him from that, and I highly doubt Umbrella was keeping DNA samples of everyone from the staff, etc. It clearly stated that they were cloned from their dead bodies.
Nice plot-hole.
Alice then wakes up, again in a strange facility and from the floor we instantly recognize it has something to do with Umbrella. A voice pops over the intercom and we realize it's Jill Valentine, and she starts asking Alice whom she works for, and apparently Alice is supposed to say Umbrella or suffer the consequences. I was expecting her to get injured, but all that happened was some high-frequency sounds that made her pass out. Kind of underwhelming. But, before you know it the power turns off and Alice escapes, wearing some really stupid outfit that has no purpose other than sex appeal.
Remember kids, in a survival situation make sure to pack your sexual clothing. Never know who may be watching. If I was in a zombie outbreak/ or any type of situation I wouldn't want someone running about in skimpy clothing.
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| Sex appeal clothing in-bound. |
She escapes the room, and arrives in what appears to be Tokyo, and she breaks into a police car and magically finds a gun. That's convenient isn't it? Either way, she grabs the gun and out of no-where it begins pouring rain, and people begin walking about. Confused, Alice stands there surveying the situation before a zombiefied girl attacks a man, and then soon an entire horde of the undead is hot on Alice's tail.
A giant pair of doors open in-front of her, and we're graced with yet another slow-motion sequence of Alice running towards the doors, and dispatching the undead. She gets inside the building, we get a few minute break and then BAM, more zombies and another slow motion sequence as she begins fighting the horde of zombies.
It was at this point when I had lost all hope for this film (hardly had any to begin with). I even annoyed a couple of annoying teen girls behind me too at this point in the film. I threw my hands up in the air, sighed and said "Really?". Not long after I was called an idiot, and told to shut up.
Either way, Alice quickly dispatches these zombies with some ridiculous back-flipping, acrobatic crap before continuing on to the next room, and being greeted with a bunch of dead people, and Ada Wong. One of the more interesting Resident Evil characters.
Ada Wong was portrayed poorly in the film. In the games we expect a character who always knows what she's doing, and to not exactly "care" much about others. In the film we get an emotional/seemingly timid character who ends up getting caught at the end of the film. It didn't feel one bit like Ada Wong, and it's the same feeling for Leon Kennedy, and Barry Burton in this film, but I won't discuss that till later. It just feels like they only added them for fan appeal, oh wait. That's the only reason, Paul Anderson even said so.
We soon find out that Ada is working for Albert Wesker, and that he survived the explosion from the previous film. He eventually says he needs the help of Alice because humanity is on the brink of extinction, and they need the ultimate weapon. So wait. Albert Wesker went from being a complete douche, and wanting to kill Alice to wanting to recruit Alice to his "good guy" cause and help eliminate the BOWs they unleashed when he was in control of Umbrella? That just seems fucking ridiculous. Plus the whole fact that the Red Queen has taken over Umbrella, and leaving Wesker powerless. Wasn't the Red Queen destroyed in the first film? Yes, she was. This makes no sense how she's in this new facility, and doing what she does. The Red Queen was based off of Charles Ashford's daughter, and he was the one who designed the program. Since he was killed in the second film, there's no way the Red Queen could of been re-built. PLOT HOLE.
Either way, Alice follows Ada through-out the facility and they start fighting off some of the bio-organic weapons (BOWs) and eventually they come to a rather quaint house where we saw Alice earlier with the Carlos clone, and we see a dead Alice lying on the ground, and we instantly realize it's a clone, which I think all the smart people realized right away. Alice moves on without any remorse, and goes up the stairs, dispatches a random zombie and her deaf "daughter" Becky comes running up to her and hugs her. Alice has no idea who she is, and Becky thinks it's her mom. Unaware of the corpse down-stairs.
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| Deaf-daughter Becky. |
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I'm just mildly confused at this, because for most of the film Becky believes Alice to be her mother, even though Becky herself is a clone and Ada explains the harsh reality that there's no point in having her tag along. And right after this whole sequence they go downstairs and are pretty much in the vicinity where the dead body of the Alice clone, whom Becky called her mother previously was. How could she not notice her dead "mother" lying on the floor? Fucking confuses me, but I guess they had some sort of plot/story to follow with Becky. No matter how painful it is to watch.
Then bam! Without a moment's notice a bunch of Umbrella goons are standing out-side the house, ready to kill Becky, Alice and Ada. In the group we get another Carlos Olivera, Rain Ocampo from the first film (who died in the end by getting shot in the head) and One. The guy who was chopped to pieces by the Red Queen's laser grid system in the first film. I'm still confused as to how they managed to clone someone who was reduced to cubed pieces of meat.
Either way, the group opens fire upon the house and attempts to kill the three "heroes". Ada Wong causes a diversion so Becky, and Alice can escape and we are then presented with the final hour or so of the film. As Alice, and Becky are moving about they meet up with Becky's teacher who also happens to be a clone of Rain, and has an anti-gun policy and proudly declares so before having a gun thrust into her hands by Alice. Alice leaves Becky with "Rain" and continues on her own to find Leon, Luther West, and Barry Burton. The team sent in to rescue them.
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| Oh look, it's Leon Kennedy. Wasn't like the character one bit. |
Alice meets up with the "extraction" team in a mock-up of Russia after driving a pimped out car, and smashing it into a giant Licker which sends it sprawling into a building. She motions for the three men to get into the vehicle, and they drive off. All while being pursued by "intelligent zombies" whom are driving vehicles, and shooting guns. Leon, and Barry dispatch most of them, and then the giant Licker returns again and pursues them for a while through Moscow, before they collapse a tunnel and presumably kill it.
They get out of the vehicle and meet up again with Becky, and Good Rain and continue their adventure to get out of the facility because it's scheduled to explode and sink to the bottom of the ocean in about an hour's time. As the group continues forward, they come to the lift to get out of the facility and prepare to leave when the power shuts down, Becky is snared by the giant Licker we believed dead, as it also slashes at "good" Rain sending her sprawling into a concrete pillar, killing her but not before it also attacks Barry and wounding him pretty seriously.
Alice goes to pursue Becky, and Luther agrees to help but not before getting shot in the arm and then backing down to help Leon, and Barry to hold off the group of Umbrella Soldiers. The shoot-out continues for a while, and Barry tells Luther and Leon to leave. He states he's having too much fun. Leon, and Luther leave and Barry has a shoot-out with the group, gets shot by the soldiers and is presumably dead. We are then blessed with another glorious slow-motion scene of Barry's magnum falling as he grabs it, and kills One and then he himself finally being killed by the group of soldiers.
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| Giant Licker vs Pimp Mobile |
Let me just say something about Mr. Kennedy in this film. Leon Kennedy is a good guy, and likes to save people. He's the complete opposite in this film, or that's what it seemed. In this film, Leon is a complete ass-hole, and told Alice she can't go save Becky because she's not worth it. The Leon I'm used to would do whatever it would take to save someone, and probably would of gone with Alice to help. Instead, he threw a hissy fit about Alice being too important. Not to mention he has a relationship with Ada Wong, and tries copping a feel at the end of the film. No. Just no.
Anyways, Alice finds Becky, rescues her and they end up in the cloning facility and Becky realizes that her real mother was a clone, and that Alice was the true Alice. Becky gets upset, and Alice says something about her being her real mother now before the Licker comes running in, Alice tosses down an explosive and they destroy the cloning facility and the Licker along with it.
The group then finally get to the surface before the entire facility floods, and they start driving off. Then, the ice breaks and an Umbrella Submarine surfaces revealing Jill Valentine, holding Ada Wong hostage and she's also with the bad Rain, and we learn that the clone Carlos had died when the facility flooded, with Jill making a get-a-way with Ada and Rain. Then, a fight ensues with Alice taking on Jill, and getting her ass kicked most of the fight, while Leon and Luther fight Rain who injects herself randomly with a Los Plagas parasite, which Leon identifies immediately. Instead of shooting her while she's injecting it, they just simply stand and watch.
Alice continues to get her ass kicked, and Rain punches Luther in the chest so hard it stops his heart, and kills him. Very anti-climatic and she also kicks Leon's ass, and prepares to kill him, but not before Alice rips off the thing on Jill's chest that was controlling her, destroys it and shoots Rain to get her attention. Rain then ensues on fighting Alice, which is probably the most boring fight ever, and disarms Alice. Jill wakes up and realizes she's no longer being controlled, and tosses the weapon to Alice. Rain does a little brag speech, and Alice shoots the ice underneath her and the smart zombies that swam to the surface pull Rain down below, and we see a swarm of hundreds, and hundreds of the zombies pulling her down and ripping her apart.
Then, the group leaves and it seems they don't even care that Luther had been killed. Totally makes no sense. On the way back in the helicopter, Leon tries coping a feel, Ada gives him a dirty look and Jill and Alice reconcile as friends once again.
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| Oh, you know. Just doing some Los Plagas here. |
The group then arrives at the Whitehouse, and then move to the oval office and we expect to see the President, but instead we see Albert Wesker, who asks to see Alice alone. Thinking that someone was about to die, Wesker lunges towards Alice and injects her with the T-Virus, giving her all of her powers back, and explains that she's the last hope of the human race. He leads the group outside and informs us that this is the last stand of humanity and as the camera pans out we see a ton of zombies, and mutated creatures from Resident Evil games assaulting the city, with marines shooting, and dying in a ravaged land-scape.
Credits roll, and we instantly know they've set it up for yet another film. Can't really expect what the last film will be, other than more slow-motion effects, more crappy dialogue, and more stupid characters that aren't like their characters in the franchise at all. This movie was just a sack of dog-shit and from the stupid, nonsensical plot, and the annoying cast of characters there's really no place to forgive this film.
It shits on the Resident Evil franchise, and shouldn't even bear the name "Resident Evil" as it just feels like a horribly done action film set in the Resident Evil universe. Please get someone who's actually played the games to be the lead behind the film please, Mr. Anderson. It totally shows that you have no idea of any of the concepts of Resident Evil, and just decided to toss them into a film that made no sense, and was just complete ass.
Horrible film, and one of the worst I've seen in a long time. Retribution gets a
2.5 out of 10, and that's still generous.
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