My name is Alice...
That's right, Alice is back and it's time for the haters to start hating. I've never really understood the hate for this film series, especially from fans of the game. Hell, if it wasn't for the movies, I would never have even played the games. Still, even I will admit that the 4th movie had it's moments of shitness, mainly stemming from an almost fetishist use of slow-motion and an intro almost entirely ripped off from the Matrix, but Resident Evil: Retribution seemed set to bring the series to new heights. Did it deliver? Did it ever.
The film begins at the exact moment the last left off. Umbrella is leading an all-out assault against Arcadia, led by Jill Vallentine (somehow played even more lifelessly by Sienna Guillory, who does brain-washed bad-ass even worse than she did regular bad-ass). So Umbrella comes in and blows everything up, and Alice is captured once more. We then jump to a non-descrip American suburb where Alice wakes up from a nightmare to her life as a subruban housewife. It seems she's now married to Carlos and they have a deaf child. Ok, Paul, I'll give it to you, this is different. Still, it's not long before the zombies show up and everybody dies. Michelle Rodriguez's Rain shows up again, for a bit, before we return to Alice, who's locked in a sterile environment, naked except for that thin sheet thing from the second movie. Now normally, I'd call this pandering, but here it's used to good effect, hammering home Alice's new vulnerability. Big props to Milla for pulling off this performance, it's nice to see Alice's human side again. Don't get me wrong, it's still pandering, but it's pandering with a purpose and Milla sells it. Still as lost as the audience, Milla manages to escape with the help of a mysterious power outage and suits up in regulation Umbrella skin-tight lycra. I'm not going to reveal anymore of the plot from here, except a few broad strokes. It seems Ada Wong, working for Albert Wesker (who no longer works for Umbrella) is the one who broke Alice out and they must now fight through he facility to meet up with a strike team, lead by Leon S. Kennedy and Barry Burton. Much arse-kicking follows.
I want to talk a little about the casting/characters here. We have three new characters from the game in this movie: Ada Wong, Leon S. Kennedy and Barry Burton. I can see why they brought Leon and Ada together, and they obviously brought in Barry for his connection to Jill.
(SPOILERS which goes nowhere because they just kill him off before the two meet and in this fiction they've never met SPOILERS)
I want to say this first, Li Bingbing's Ada Wong is fantastic, she gets the character spot on. Ada Wong is my favourite Resident Evil character and I was very worried about whether they could get her right in the movies, but the Ada Wong on screen is very much the Ada from the games. Sadly, she's very underutilized, given little to do except act as a plot device. Still, that's nothing compared to the horror that is Leon. I've got no idea who this guy they chose to play him is, but he is terrible. He's terrible if you compare the character to the game, and he's terrible if you've never even heard of the character. For one, leather jacket aside, he doesn't look a thing like Leon. Secondly, his characterisation is completely wrong. Leon is a typical B-grade action hero. He spouts terrible one-liners, he's basically brain-dead and if he's showing any emotion at all, it's usually some kind of bravado. This films Leon shouts a lot, scowls a lot and seems to be all dark and haunted by something. Also, his relationship with Ada is barely developed at all, which makes the little wink and nod to it at the end feel more like pandering towards the gamers and alienation of the people who only know the films. Barry is handled a bit better, but like Ada is given very little to do. I was initially thrown by the actor, who seems to be of Asian descent, but he delivers a decent performance. The part where he whips out his magnum towards the end is pure pandering towards the gamers as well, but at least this scene doesn't alienate the film fans.
Bitching aside, this movie gets a lot of things right. The plot is almost non-existent and completely unimportant. It basically feels more like a game than any of the previous movies. Alice and her friends fight through various levels and set-pieces and battle massive bosses on their way to the surface, before the movie ends on one of the greatest cliff-hangers/sequel bait I've ever seen. Also, the final fight is incredibly well shot and acted. Paul has really developed as an action director throughout these movies and the action this time around is easy to follow and beautifully shot. The action elements are often used to further enforce Alice's vulnerability, she is often wounded, or at the very least seems less confident and over-the-top compared to the previous films. The over-use of slow-mo is completely gone. In fact, there's almost no slow-mo in the entire film. The first action sequence is shot in slow-mo, but runs entirely in reverse, which is a really cool effect.
Overall, Retribution is my favourite in the series so far. The acting is the best so far (a few exceptions aside), the pacing is brilliant, the action is easier to follow and the 3D is much better done and far less gimmicky. I should also give a mention to the great score, which is less pilfered popular music and more actual composed score. If you can see this in the cinema, I really recommend that you do it. It really needs to be experienced on the big screen. otherwise, wait for the BluRay, whack on the 3D glasses and dive once more into the crazy world of Resident Evil.
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