Resident Evil: Retribution

Title: Resident Evil: Retribution

Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Released: 2012

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Kevin Durand, Sienna Guillory, Shawn Roberts, Aryana Engineer, Oded Fehr, Colin Salmon, Johann Urb, Boris Kodjoe, Li Bingbing

Plot: Picking up directly after the end of “Resident Evil: Afterlife” Alice (Jovovich) now finds herself captured by the Umbrella Corperation and placed in an underwater facility which also doubles as a demonstration ground for the effects of the T-Virus. Now Alice must team up with the mysterious Ada Wong to escape the facility which is now under the control of a recently reactivated “Red Queen”.

Review: Its staggering to think at this point in the series that we are five films deep in the franchise which at this point has also gone on its own very unique path from the source material as we continue to follow the journey of Alice in her battle against the Umbrella Corporation and of course the zombie hordes created by the T-Virus. Still just when we thought the series had already gone way off the deep end Director Paul W. S. Anderson somehow manages to find a way to top it.

Seeing how the previous film ended on the fantastic cliffhanger of Alice on the deck of of the Umbrella Tanker Arcadia as she stared down a squadron of Umbrella Tiltrotors. Now half expecting the film to open with Alice being captured what Anderson gives us instead is actually something pretty special as we get to the events which transpired played out in reverse slow motion which honestly only serves to make it all the more impactful than if we’d seen it played out normally.

One of the strengths of the series has always been Jovovich’s performance as Alice a role she truly has made more and more her own with each film even designing Alice’s outfits through her own fashion line. Here though we get to see a new side to Alice as she finds herself waking up in a suburban dream life complete with husband and deaf daughter Becky (Engineer) only for dream to quickly turn into the same sort of zombie nightmare we saw at the start of Zack Snyder’s “Dawn of the Dead” remake. Here in lies the kicker for this instalment as Alice finds herself in a facility made up of large scale remakes of various cities such as Tokyo and New York which originally had been designed as a way of selling the T-virus to various countries replicating the rival country at the facility. This of course really is just an excuse for Anderson to craft a series of large scale and flamboyant action sequences as the film itself feels like one long shoot out, especially with the plot moving at such a fast pace.

The action throughout is great to look and while this entry perhaps features more heroic gunplay than previous entries with the introduction of Ada Wong here played note perfect by Li Bingbing whose performance was surprisingly dubbed well by Sall Cahill but watching the film I couldn’t tell . Ada as a character though is finally a character able to stand toe to toe with Alice and to see them working together in the film really was a thrill. Afterall why have one kickass lady when you can have two.

Each of the settings are unique enough to stand out and provides a decent change from another round of post-apocalyptic wastelands or the sterile facilities of the umbrella corporation. True none of it is shot with seemingly the slightest concern for what is realistic or not but its really hard to complain when its so much fun to have scenes such as a high speed chase through a simulated Moscow or an army of zombie soldiers. These scenes only being added to by Anderson’s visual style which here once again works really well.

This facility setting for the film also means we get to see the return of several characters such as James (Salmon) and Rain (Rodriguez) who get to return to the series as clones. Rodriguez in perticular getting to play two versions of herself as we see her playing her Strike team persona from the first film sent to hunt Alice and Ada aswell as the suburban version who plays like the complete opposite as she acts openly shocked at the idea of using guns. Yes I could have done without seeing Colin Salmon again, but then I can pretty much do without seeing him in most things., Rodriguez meanwhile is enjoyable as always and getting to see the super powered version at the end was only an added treat.

For some reason Anderson here also chooses to saddle Alice with a Deaf daughter, who its explained early on is infact a clone from the suburban simulation created to play her daughter. Of course knowing this Alice still shows a mothers devotion to the child perhaps because Anderson couldn’t find a way to morally justify dumping the kid without turning her into a zombie kid. Maybe this was just another way of working his obsession with James Cameron’s “Aliens” into the film and creating his own version of Ripley and Newt. At the same time you could also see the different settings the group travel through as being a nod to “Westworld” which was also reportedly another source of inspiration for the film.

Ending on another tantalising cliffhanger with Alice having her superhuman abilities restored and the sight of humanity making its last stand from the grounds of the fortified White House. Say what you will about Anderson as a director he really knows how to make an audience crave that next instalment.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Title: Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Director: Alexander Witt

Released: 2004

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann, Jared Harris, Mike Epps, Mathew G. Taylor

Plot: Following on from the events of the first film Alice (Jovovich) awakens to find herself in Racoon City which has now been ravaged by the T-Virus which the Umbrella Corporation are now moving to cover up. Joining up with suspended police officer Jill Valentine, Alice and a small group of uninfected survivors must attempt to escape the city.

Review: Despite the fact the original film hardly reciving glowing praise from the critics and audiences alike it looked doubtful that Paul W.S Anderson would get to make good on the cliffhanger he ended the first film on with a post coma Alice waking up with a ravaged Racoon City. Still when you deliver a $102.4 million box office on a budget of $35 Million it was kind of inevitable that the studio would push for a follow up. Anderson however would not return for this first sequel other than to produce and write the script as at the time he was busy giving the world his sterile take on both the Alien and Predator franchises with the flacid “Alien Vs. Predator” and leaving second unit director Alexander Witt to instead helm the film which remains his sole credit as a director and having seen the film its not hard to see why.

While the first film might have drawn its inspirations from the first game, this time round its the turn of “Resident Evil 2” and “Resident Evil: Nemesis” both which took place in Racoon City before the series headed off for more exotic locales in the games which followed. However like the first film they are merely just the foundations for another original script from Anderson who despite not being in the directors chair is still keep the build on the world he established in the first film in particular the evolution of Alice as a character.

This time Alice has her memory back while thanks to some tinkering by the Umbrella scientists she now has superhuman strength and agility which from the writing perspective means that Anderson is able to work more than a few OTT scenes into the film such as her introduction to the films main group of survivors which sees her crashing through a church stain glass window riding a motorcycle before blasting the hell out of a group of lickers. For some reason she also seems to be obsessed with sharing her back story whenever given a chance regardless of if characters have heard it before so if you didn’t know that she is an ex-security officer you’ll certainly know by the fifth time she’s told the group. In this instalment we do get to atleast know alittle more history behind the T-Virus and how it relates to Alice through the introduction of the Virus’s creator Dr. Ashford whose daughter Angela, Alice has to rescue from her school in order to get out of the city. The plot for the most part is frustratingly plodding and really only picks up when there’s a big set piece to work in.

From this film we really start to see Alice as the superhero style asskicker with the genetic tampering of her DNA now being used as blank check to work in any ludicrous idea that Anderson can think of and seemingly being all the justification we are supposed to need to understand her evolution from slaying Zombies in a pretty red dress to here being more military in her clothing choice let alone her suddenly being an expert in combat and military tactics which enable her to evade helicopters and repel down the sides of buildings.

The group this time round are a pretty unlikeable bunch with the exception of Sienna Guillory’s Jill Valentine who is a perfect feisty counterpart to Alice as she is introduced shooting zombies in the head which for some reason seem to be of little concern to anyone else in the police station let alone the fact that she is blasting away in such a crowded setting. Also in this group is Jill’s fellow S.T.A.R.S team member Peyton (Adoti), former umbrella soldier Carlos (Fehr) who was also a character introduced in “Resident Evil: Nemesis”. The most irritating though is the motormouthed L.J (Epps) who was originally supposed to be played by Snoop Dog until he dropped out during pre-production and I can’t help but feel that this character would have been less irritating had he still played him.

Our big evil this time is Major Cain (Kretschmann) whose heading up Umbrella’s containment operation and from his introduction its clear that he cares little for the citizens of Racoon city with his concerns instead lying purely with covering up the outbreak by any means possible. This includes sealing the Racoon City residents in the city aswell as releasing Nemesis to kill off the remaining members of S.T.A.R.S

Nemesis is unquestionably one of the strongest aspects of this film and is perfectly transferred from the game where like he is here a towering monster who also happens to weld a minigun and rocket launcher, both which while might have seemed overkill in the game here actually work for the character. Credit also has to be given to Mathew G. Taylor for making this character work especially when the suit weighed around 60 pounds limiting him to shooting in 15 min bursts or risk the heat of the suit overcoming him though to make matters worse the Minigun also added an addition 60 pounds for him to carry. Yes the character might be limited to slowly plodding around the city, but like in the game this really only adds to the daunting presence of this monster.

The downside of this character however comes when it comes to him doing anything other than shooting his weapons which becomes only the more obvious when we get the scenes of Alice fighting Nemesis with a pair of police batons. Due to the restrictive movement of Taylor wearing the suit the whole fight sequence just ends up coming off clumsy for the parts we do get to see with director Witt insisting on shooting the action almost ontop of the actors its often hard to figure out what is supposed to be happening let alone feel any kind of engagement with these fight sequences.

As with the first film this is still a sterile zombie movie with none of the gore we’d expect from the genre, though this time we have to contend with this weird half speed effect that Witt seems to be obsessed with using throughout the film. At the same time he constantly insists on shooting the zombie scenes almost on top of the actors making it often hard to figure out what is supposed to happening and often leaving scenes feeling a lot more chaotic than they should be. We do however get a few decent scenes in the film such as one of the group being overcome by a group of zombie school children aswell as another fun scene with the zombie dogs who make a return here.

A step down from the first film which seeing how that film lingered around the ass end of okay, really doesn’t say much for this film, more so when the ending is dragged out an additional fifteen minutes so that Alice’s character can become even more powered up than before. As such its doubtful that you will return to it after your initial viewing leaving it one for the completionists.

Resident Evil

Title: Resident Evil

Director: Paul W. S. Anderson

Released: 2002

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Michelle Rodriguez, Eric Mabius, James Purefoy, Martin Crewes, Colin Salmon

Plot: When the T-Virus is released in a secret underground facility called “The Hive” an elite military unit is sent in only to find the staff have been turned into zombies while a mysterous woman suffering amnesia named Alice (Jovovich) might hold the key to their survival.

Review: Paul W. S. Anderson might be one of the most frustratingly diversive directors currently working today as throughout his careers he’s danced between directing interesting original pieces such as his ram raiding drama “Shopping” and “Event Horizon” while at the same time spending a large chunk of his career making video game adaptations as he proved you can make a decent video game adaptation with “Mortal Kombat” before setting his sights on the “Resident Evil” franchise which somehow he has managed to turn into a franchise of its own.

Watching the film back when it was originally released I genuinely could not have predicted that the series would last as long as it has, let alone how much of a horror icon Alice would become and while I might have tapped out originally after this first entry I felt it was long overdue that I actually revisit the series if only to discover what it is about these films which has enabled them to keep churning out new entries which have increasingly moved away from the source material and into a post-apocalyptic near future.

Opening to a mystery scientist stealing the T-virus before unleashing the virus in the lab sending the facility into lockdown as he makes his escape, the employees of the Hive meanwhile assuming that its a fire drill shuffle around the hallways only to soon find themselves being targeted by the facility security system known as “The Red Queen”. It’s a fun scene especially when it includes a misguided attempt to escape from an elevator leaving one employee minus their head. From here Anderson really doesn’t let up on the tension as we are introduced to Alice lying on the floor of her shower with no memory of who or where she is, while the fact that she suddenly has a group of gas mask clad commando’s swinging through the window really doesn’t help things either.

While the opening might be packed with genuine tension and atmosphere, things soon start to go downhill as Alice joins the commando’s as they set about infiltrating the Hive. Here the plotting goes the way of a traditional zombie horror as the group manage to unleash the recently zombified employees aswell as a number of other genetic experiments the company has been working on. Thankfully though Anderson mixes things up enough her to stop this being just another zombie thriller as we get a number of fantastic set sequences such as Alice facing off against a group of zombie dogs and the now legendary laser hallway sequence. At the same time Anderson doesn’t feel the need to anchor himself to the source material which saw him turning “Mortal Kombat” into an “Enter the Dragon” remake with added supernatural elements. Here it is very much the case again as he opts not to include any of the characters from the games and outside of the mention of the “Umbrella Corporation” Anderson keeps many of the references to the game much more subtle.

One of the more interesting aspects of the film though is how the film can be viewed for the numerous references to “Alice in Wonderland” that are worked into the film making it little coincidence that our heroine is called “Alice” let alone the fact that the security system is named “The Red Queen” creepily represented by a hologram of its creators daughter. The original script also saw the inclusion of “The White Queen” who would have been the main AI system at the Umbrella Headquarters monitoring the Hive and counting the Red Queens security systems while explaining how the commando’s are able to access the Hive. Even though this was removed from the final script there are still plenty of other refrences to be spotted such as the entrance to the Hive being through a mirror (Alice enters through the looking glass), the white rabbit the virus is shown being tested on aswell as the Red Queen decapitating one of the group. Unquestionably its a unique approach while one subtle enough to be overlooked until its pointed out and much like the amnesia plotline it strangely works even though when I first watched the film on its original release I have to admit to being more than a little disappointed that while it had hints of the games such as the mansion and the secret lab underneath the characters and plotting where completely different.

My other bug bear with the film is just how sterile it is as Anderson sets up a fun moment of gore or a zombie attack only to cut away at the last second leaving you feeling cheated, especially if you’ve come up watching the classic zombie movies of the 70’s and 80’s which on the surface it appears that Anderson is keen to homage here (not a running zombie in sight) though sadly not their gut munching visuals. Intrestingly the Zombie godfather George A. Romero was at one point attached to write and direct the film only to abandon the project after numerous classes with the studio during the pre-production process with his version sticking more closely to the games with Jill Valentine being the female lead instead of Alice and I can’t help but wonder if his version would have given the film its much needed dose of gore that is noticeably missing here.

Despite the lack of gore Anderson still manages to craft some memorable zombie attack scenes including the group trying to escape the hordes using overhead pipes while the zombie attack scenes are all suitably tense and chaotic even if they do feel ultimately hollow thanks to the lack of gore. That being said the film could be seen as an entry level zombie movie for those not quite up for the gore of Romero’s Zombie saga yet not wanting to hokey antics of “White Zombie” and “Plague of the Zombies”. Yes this is not a perfect film, especially with so much clunky dialogue floating around but as a gentle starting point for zombie movies you really could do a lot worse.

The cast are really a mixed back here with Milla Jovovich getting to flex her action-heroine chops here after previously kicking a whole lot of ass in “The Fifth Element” and while she might do anything as spectacular here she does own the character of Alice, though I don’t think anyone could have guessed from this first film what an iconic character she would become. Michelle Rodriguez is equally fun as her tough commando counter with her casting coming at her own request being a fan of the games she had asked her agent to keep an eye out for any attempts to adapt them. Colin Salmon meanwhile continues to make me wonder who is actually casting him much like Alan Cummings as despite getting the best death of the movie is pretty horrible throughout his brief appearance here.

While this is far from a perfect film I did enjoy it more this time around than I did watching in on its original release. Perhaps this was because I knew what to expect this time around or maybe seeing how it fits into the larger vision that Anderson has turned it into with each new film. Even on its own this is pretty disposable fun though if your looking for a good zombie movie your attentions are best placed elsewhere.