Resident Evil: Retribution

  

I won't give too much away, but a few thoughts. Yes, I shelled out 10 bucks for the 3D glasses and it was a fun waste of 90 minutes. Look, I know what kind of movie I'm getting into and this is the fifth film in a series that just keeps on ticking. The ending of this joker sets up yet another sequel. I'm an unabashed fan of Paul WS Anderson although he's considered a hi-tech filmmaker of action shlock. He's probably made his most high-profile film with Event Horizon, and that was what fifteen years ago? Anyway, Anderson can sure wow with a sweet action scene. He opens this movie with a major attack on the ship set sail at the end of Afterlife but backwards! For some reason seeing a bullet return to the chamber in reverse has a coolness I can't describe. Anderson is just showing out here, and uses the 3D format to its full capacity. For someone who supposed to be human, absent the powers she had gained from an injection of the T-Virus (removed in the previous film), Alice can sure perform amazing feats in the air, flipping and snapping throats while using a gun and chain on multiple Tokyo zombies...this is the very definition of multi-tasking. I'm an honest guy, I think Milla is a beautiful woman and I like to look at her face and watch her kick ass, even if a ton of her action scenes should be given credit to hubby Anderson who makes her look damn good on screen. I love this cat suit she wears that hugs on her petite, yet athletic body. I like her. I think she is good when performing with the little clone girl she bonds/befriends during the scenes in "Umbrella Suburbia", showing a motherly obligation to protect and keep safe this person created by a "computer malfunction of artificial intelligence", called "The Red Queen".

Think of this is a amplified Escape from Umbrella. Alice is to join forces with soldiers of her adversary in order to get out of this massive Umbrella compound underground in some Siberia type location under an icy Soviet factory. Umbrella sold biological weaponry to all countries which led to the global viral catastrophe. Now Wesker sees that The Red Queen wants to end the human race's existence altogether and decides he needs to join forces with Alice since her body can handle the T-Virus, sending some grunts to rescue her from the Umbrella compound (which consists of models of Moscow, New York City, and a Suburbia, The Red Queen running hour-long recreations of the incidents that inflicted areas on Earth, using human clones over and over again in place of the humans who populated them at the time the viral spread took place) as The Red Queen sends clone soldiers to combat them.

I was hoping Anderson was gonna really give us a treat right out of EC Comics when Soviet soldier zombies from WWII appeared from a fog to fire ammunition at Wesker's grunts in the stunning Moscow sequence, but we never really see their faces which just disappointed me. I think they all had skeletal face designs that could have been real cool for those of us who consider this "ghoul eye candy". There is one awesome scene I think leaves a distinctive impression...one of Alice's super-soldier foes is about to finish her off when our heroine fires the ice underneath her feet. In the water are these zombies right out of a Fulci film, hordes of them swimming in a collective mass pulling the villain into their number, an incredible visual image.

Anderson loves to show computerized schematics of the underground compound as The Red Queen follows the whereabouts of her enemies, their locations as to send her soldiers after them. We also she "schematics" of certain victims' internal damage when suffering devastating blows, You get Alice in quite a fight with Jill Valentine, a friend under the influence of The Red Queen thanks to this mechanical spider that attaches itself to the chest (we see Jill's eyes carry the Umbrella insignia when under the Queen's control). I just want to say that Sienna Guillory can sure fill a leather suit, and her Jill gives Alice quite an ass kicking.