So Alice is a prisoner of Umbrella,
particularly the childlike Red Queen enitity who I think plans
to kill every remaining human on earth for some reason or
another, until she is set free by one Ada Wong (Li Bingbing),
under the order of Albert Wesker. Don't ask me why for I
can't explain it. Also a team of mercs has been sent to
the underwater domain of Umbrella to assist in the freedom
effort, principle upon these would be Luther West (Boris
Kodjoe) from the last movie and the first and long overdue of
appearance of one Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb).
Action then ensues. And it won't stop. Ever.
'Resident Evil: Retribution' is not a good movie. Not
even close to a good movie, but of course this doesn't mean
that it's devoid of entertainment value, but it does possess a
litany of insurmountable problems as a work of viable
cinema. By now we all know that the narrative of this
series has next to nothing to do with the videogames of which
it shares in name only, but now it doesn't even have much to
do with itself anymore as far as a narrative goes. It's
revealed to us that Umbrella created the T-Virus to sell to
the nations to make money. Now Umbrella just wants to
kill us all. Even though at one time it wanted save us
all. But if it kills us all, who is it going to sell its
awesome T-Virus to now? The aliens that could possibly
show up in Resident Evil 6? I would estimate that there
might be a good fifty or so lines of dialog in this movie,
with very little of this dialog having any kind of impact on
what little story is being told. And what little dialog
is being told is rattled off with all the passion of reciting
through a Burger King menu, and that's by almost all the
actors in this movie who seem to recognize, to a person, that
they are the least important part of this movie.
But let's say you're the type who doesn't like words, or crisp
acting, or story continuity or sense making. You just
like to watch bullets fly and punching and kicking and
exploding and monsters and Nazi zombies riding motorcycles and
you want to watch this stuff go real fast in glorious
3D. Then allow me to step aside and usher you into the
movie theater my friend, because here you go!
And while this movie has next to nothing to do with the actual
videogame, it still has lot of nice videogame touches.
The guy they have playing Leon S. Kennedy and his signature
hair-do? Perfect. Ada Wong coming to
kick ass in a tight cheongsam dress with a slit going all the
way up her thigh, while wildly inappropriate and probably
uncomfortable for your average ass-kicking super agent, this
is nonetheless videogame female character standard gear.
Guns with unlimited bullets, or guns that reload simply by
shooting away from the TV screen, which I think I saw Alice do
one time… it's all there. And then there's the
repetitive nature of going through levels and doing the same
damn thing over and over and over again, just like in a
videogame… 'Retribution' does all of this. And did I
mention they found a way to bring Michelle Rodriguez
back? The device used is wacky and completely
nonsensical, just like this entire movie, but she has returned
and the movie and my life is better for it.
Whaddayagonnado? 'Resident Evil: Retribution' really
isn't all that good a movie, but the action is explosive,
albeit repetitive, and it is that rare Hollywood movie shot in
3D where the 3D actually adds value to the movie. Not a
good movie but it's not like we're going to skip it since we
here at the FCU always seems to watch Resident Evil movies no
matter what. Heck if I know why.
