Resident Evil: Retribution Review

You know I admit I kinda enjoyed the Resident Evil movie franchise, it was simple mindless fun that is enjoyed with fellow gamers who enjoy seeing a snippet of gaming making it to the big screen.

Resident Evil: Retribution however is so bad that when I watched it I questioned what I did to deserve such a punishment. Was is it the time when I accidentally stole that bag of chips as a child? or was it the time I set my teacher on fire? (that was an accident by the way). Two hours of my already sad little life had been extinguished thanks to this travesty of a movie. Full review after the break.





So onto the review (god help me). The movie starts off at the ending of Resident Evil: Afterlife, Alice (the main protagonist) are attacked by an Umbrella Task Force led by the now mind controlled Jill Valentine. In the ensuing fight Alice gets thrown into the water and wakes up in a nice home with Carlos as a husband and  Becky who is a child with a hearing disorder however this peaceful family gets runover by zombies and in the end Alice gets killed by Carlos zombie AND THEN Alice wakes up in an Umbrella testing facility with the peaceful family life to be just a dream...or was it? anway Alice then gets a call from Wesker who was thought to have been killed in the last film (but is not dead because any self respecting RE fan knows that Wesker is a tough bastard to kill), so anyway Wesker wants to strike an alliance with Alice on the basis that they have a common enemy in the form of the Red Queen the artificial intelligence first seen in the first movie.

The Red Queen has basically taken over Umbrella from Wesker and Wesker not being too pleased managed to round up a task force comprising of  franchise favourites Leon Kennedy and Barry Burton along with Luther West who survived from the last movie and with them are a couple of stereotype cannon fodders you know who will get killed sooner or later. Anyway Ada Wong also appears to aid Alice and put a stop to the Red Queen. Along the way we discover the previous event with Alice was not a dream and did actually happen and Alice just saw it through the eyes of her clone and then Becky is revealed to be alive runs to Alice thinking that its her mother. Then this whole clone thing gets turned upside down when Rain, Carlos and One (all of whom are dead in the movie franchise) are revealed to have evil clones who try and kill our protagonists. So basically mind controlled Jill and evil clones chase after Leon, Barry, Ada, Alice and Luther all across the Umbrella test facility which are divided into the Suburbia Zone which is basically made out to look like a Raccoon City suburb, the Tokyo Zone and the Moscow Zone which has Commie Zombies.Things take a turn for the worse when Alice loses her new found daughter to a giant licker(zombie rat thing).

This movie was so shit that the house committed suicide. 

 So after a nice romp through the facility our heroes emerge victorious on the surface but then cut off by the surviving Jill Valentine and Bad Rain (there is a good version of Rain but she died without any pomp and circumstance) and Ada Wong who is a hostage. So final fight ensues, Jill fights with Alice and Bad Rain who injected herself with the Las Plagas virus fights with Luther and Leon (Barry died). Bad Rain kills Luther and nearly kills Leon, Alice is thrown around by Jill but then then Alice then pulls out the mind control bug from Jill's chest. Alice then shoots a hole in the frozen lake Bad Rain was standing on and she gets pulled into the cold water by zombies and as she goes down she swears revenge against all the remaining heroes. The heroes then get whisked away to Washington D.C more specifically the White House where they meet Wesker who then injects Alice with a serum that restore her original psionic powers. It is then revealed that the White House compound is one of the last bastions of humanity is being besieged by all types of Bio Organic Weapons. Wesker than reminds Alice of their alliance and greater foe the Red Queen. The movie then ends with all the B.O.Ws and remaining US Army troops fighting against one another on an epic scale.

Now for all of you who are still alive. This movie gets so much wrong. First off Jill Valentine is under mind control and Alice does not know how to stop her until the final moments of the movie BUT in the last movie when Claire was under mind control it took Alice less than 5 minutes to remove the mind control device ...you dont believe me? here's photo proof.

 Oh noes Claire...let me take that out for you. Estimated Time of Disabling Mind Control Device: 5 mins


AND 

Durrr What is that Shiny Red Thing ?  Estimated Time of Disabling Mind Control Device:  2 hours

Also we have Russian zombies who can drive, ride motorcycles and fire guns. Now I know that such B.O.Ws exist in the games but those were given the facade they retain some intelligence...now look at the Russian Zombie from the movie.

BBBBRRAAAIAINNNSS...then..VOOODDKKAA. 

Then came the horrid acting which failed at every level. The gun skirmishes in the movie were downright shit not one person could score a direct hit on anyone else and just fired randomly into the scene. The dialogue between the characters was so bad that I think the zombies had far better interaction amongst themselves.

The story fails on so many  levels, Wesker in the White House does seem cool but everything from the rescue storyline to explanation about the virus and the involvement of the Red Queen was done poorly. I felt that the fault lay in the fact that the protagonists were far apart from one another and the viewer was thrown from one story to another. Just when they started to feel comfortable a brand new branch appears and it was just as crap as the others.

 Case in point, one storyline had the rescue team led by Leon Kennedy being ambushed by previously mentioned Russian Zombies and then after seeing about 2 minutes of them fighting for their lives we are thrust to Ada's and Alice's storyline which involves them going through the recesses of the facility to link up with Leon and his team. It all culminated in a very poor final fight which was so poorly choreographed I felt that the director had contacted Helen Keller from beyond the grave to be the fight coordinator.

This is basically me at the end of the film...rushing toward the exit...as was every other soul who watched the movie. 

One thing that can be considered remotely good are the special effects, there were some nice set pieces involving explosions and huge torrents of water.

The thing that truly disappoints me about this film is not how much it spits on the original franchise (it has done that since the third movie) but how much zombie related crap it can shove in your face because the director Paul W.S Anderson knows that the public will just eat it up. The Russian Army zombies are proof of this unimaginative yet lucrative move. There is zero imagination in the monster design and the remotely good ones are taken from the games. I feel like it has reached a point that the movie franchise can spew the most unimaginative material and treat the viewer like a complete idiot because it knows that people en masse will buy the tickets just because of the Resident Evil name attached to it.

I give this movie the worst score possible.

And that is not enough...I give this game the mark of shame..the Pubic Hair Mark...an honour bestowed on those that have violated several laws regarding human rights. Know that this mark once given forever stamps it as one of the worst things to come out of a human being.