At some point, it all starts to feel familiar….
What They Say:
Awakening in a top-secret Umbrella facility as the T-virus threatens to wipe out the last remnants of humanity, Alice (Milla Jovovich) ventures on a quest to uncover the truth about her mysterious past and seek out the source of the apocalyptic plague. The deeper Alice ventures into the complex, the more she begins to learn about her origins. Later, after escaping to the outside world, she embarks on an epic adventure that takes her to the farthest corners of the globe as she fights the forces of darkness alongside allies both old and new.
The Review:
The Resident Evil series of films, this being the fifth entry, is something that I wholly admit as a kind of twisted guilty pleasure. I’m not exactly a fan of Milla Jovovich, but I’ve liked her in a number of things. I enjoyed the first three films when I got them in a cheap Blu-ray box set years ago and definitely had fun with Afterlife when that hit home video as well. That got roundly criticized on release, much as the first three did, so I avoided seeing it in the theaters only to get into it once against a mindless romp. So with Retribution, I made sure that I got to see this one on the big screen. And while I won’t see I wasn’t disappointed in some ways, I did have a blast with it as it gave me mostly what I wanted. Just lacking in more of the story elements I had hoped it would have in order to push things forward, figuring that a sixth and final installment is likely based on overall boxoffice take worldwide. I mean, I don’t go into these expecting huge story, but I wanted a little more.
There’s always a sense of deja vu with these films (and no, I’m not one looking for a proper adaptation of the game, though I’d love to see a future reboot do them proper justice) but here things are just a bit much at the start, useful as it may be. The opening few minutes gives us the credits sequence by showing the final minutes of the previous film on board the ship in slow motion reverse. It’s actually interesting to watch a bit and then it goes and moves forward again, letting us see both sides and getting us queued up on where things will go. Only then it decide it wants to spend a couple of minutes with Milla as Alice talking to us directly with small screens whizzing about bringing us up to speed from the first film through the fourth. I kind of appreciated this as I went with someone who had never seen the previous films and though it would help to do a decent little recap. It didn’t.
Where this film wants to go is essentially a repeat of a large part of the first. With the way the world is, everything has seemingly fallen apart but the Umbrella Corporation is still running and doing well with all of its research and experiments. Where they are now is in Kamchatka utilizing an older abandoned Russian naval graveyard where they’ve converted and built some massive underground structures in which they do large scale recreations of places like a few blocks worth of Tokyo, New York and so forth to show how effective their bioweapons are. And they populate it with a series of clones designed on fifty or so base models, which makes certain CG aspects easy to deal with. It’s in the suburbia experiment that we get Alice waking up, at least initially, and going through the horror all over again before she re-awakens inside a controlled Umbrella room where the Umbrella controlled Jill is lording everything over her in an attempt to gain information from her. What information? It really doesn’t matter anymore, does it?
Where things diverge a bit is in that Wesker, last seen getting himself killed in Afterlife, now needs Alice for his own plans (hello, sixth film) and that means getting her out of there. He has a woman on the inside with Ada Wong and is sending Luther, Leon and a group of others from the outside to break in, go through the various simulation worlds, and rescue them. So Alice and Ada have to escape (while acquiring a kid along the way from the simulation world that Alice finds herself bonded with) while going through a large array of clones, faceless Umbrella soldiers and others nasty creatures that have populated the games and previous movies. It’s very reminiscent of the first film if only because that took place underground and a lot of it was just all of them trying to escape upwards to safety. We get it from both sides here for a bit and then it goes whole hog.
And really, that’s the thrust of the film. A de-powered Alice (who is still quite powerful) making her way with minimal weapons and confusion early on trying to navigate an array of foes, all of which is controlled by the Red Queen as she’s taken over Umbrella entirely at this point. The film uses plenty of familiar elements with a ton of style over substance, but it’s the kind of style that has long populated the franchise and is now simply quite polished within it (though it wouldn’t fare well in some other films, I’m sure). It goes for the aggressive side, doesn’t shy from bloodshed and some nasty creatures that kill and are killed along the way. The body count is alright by most standards, but ti almost feels a little tame. I got a kick out of watching Alice once she got going, mostly from the point where she and Ada got moving (walking, of course, even though there’s a countdown to get out. Seriously people, run sometimes) but I did like some of the more basic elements of the Suburbia simulation as well.
In Summary:
The best way I can describe this film is that it comes across as the interlude before the finale. A clean-up of elements, moving of characters, into what the franchise finale should be in a sixth film should it get made. Everything is done to closure here for this particular arc and it works the characters about as well as one might expect, but it leaves us on the kind of cliffhanger where, against better judgment in some ways, damnit you want more. There’s a kind of by the numbers feeling to this film, lacking some of the charm and intensity that I thought Afterlife had, but it’s mostly going through the motions in order to kind of fix what went on before and get Alice where she needs to be. It doesn’t spend much time in poorly lit places, a nice change of pace, and I liked the whole simulation aspect. But it’s also frustrating because, like previous films, it’s hard to understand how Umbrella continues to exist and you want to know more of how the world itself is, whether there’s really anyone left. Resident Evil: Retribution is definitely just for the fans of the previous ones and isn’t a jumping on point by any stretch. But I really came out of it enjoying it for the mindless action romp it is, the totality of style over substance while offering just enough to make me want to come back for more. And I very much do want more based off of the ending we get here. Damn you, Wesker!
Grade: B
