Even though I have no idea how to correctly pronounce her name, I like Milla Jovovich. That's why I'm happy that the Resident Evil film series has finally hit its fifth entry, with Milla reprising her role as the rogue Umbrella agent Alice. Resident Evil: Retribution is once again directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, whose other credits include the seminal Alien vs. Predator and Mortal Kombat films (I am of course using the definition of "seminal" which means "of, relating to, or denoting semen").
As you can see, Paul "Wasp Sting" Anderson has firmly established himself as the new go-to guy for videogame-to-movie adaptations. But if you think that the R.E. movies are simply based on the Biohazard/Resident Evil game series, you're wrong and the second movie proved that fact. Paul "Walking Snake" Anderson momentarily gave in to the idiotic demands of the series' fans and set up Resident Evil: Apocalypse to mimic the Nemesis video game as accurately as it could, and it was terrible for it. Not even in a so-bad-it's-good way. It was simply a bad movie. It was too over-the-top to be taken seriously, and took itself too seriously to be truly over-the-top.
What the Resident Evil movies are really based on is the idea that Milla Jovovich looks really good when she's kicking ass. This is actually what all of her movies are about. The Fifth Element had nothing to do with Bruce Willis and the end of the world. It was about Milla Jovovich fighting aliens and wearing sexy orange suspenders. Ultraviolet wasn't just an Aeon Flux knock-off. It was an Aeon Flux knock-off with Milla Jovovich fighting … whatever the hell she was fighting in that movie. I'm going to hedge my bets and say it was some combination of Corporate America and The Man.
Extinction was the first Resident Evil movie to realize this winning formula and set Milla up as a road warrior-esque hero, and the result was a huge improvement over Apocalypse. It wasn't goofy, but it also didn't hold any illusions about its audience. No one bought a ticket to Resident Evil: Extinction to see a serious take on the zombie apocalypse or a story that was accurate to the games. We went to see Milla Jovovich hurt things in cool ways. The only things working against that were Alice's new psychic powers, which did too much to minimize the amount of actual hand-to-face fighting she did. Who needs fight choreography when she can set birds on fire with her brain? Less of that and more crazy backflips and chain whipping, please.
Resident Evil: Afterlife learned from that mistake and at some point stripped Alice of her psychic powers. I actually missed the fourth movie, though, so I don't have a clear picture of what happened between Extinction and Retribution. Luckily it doesn't matter because plot is as consequential to a Resident Evil film as peanut butter is to my attitude toward children's allergies. No school can tell me what foods I can and can't smear on their door handles!
Which brings me to the subject of my review. Resident Evil: Retribution is set in an underground Umbrella facility that isn't the underground Umbrella facility from the first movie. It also marks the return of Michelle Rodriguez and Colin Salmon to the series, but not in the same roles that they played in the first movie (because they both died). It seems some evil corporation has been doing a lot of cloning—and so has Umbrella. Did you see what I did there? Oooooh, up top!
The Red Queen—the homicidal artificial intelligence from the first movie—is also back and trying to do something with "Project Alice" that's purpose is never revealed; but it gives Milla Jovovich an excuse to fight monsters and look awesome while doing so. It's rare that you see an A.I. depicted as the true hero of a film, but that's just another way in which Paul "Wallaby Strangler" Anderson defies your expectations.
Honestly, they could recycle every bit of plot from the previous movies and I'd still enjoy it as long as it included tons of new ways for Milla to kill/hurt things. In fact, they could recycle any movie's plot to the same effect. For instance, Finding Forrester now has 70 extra minutes of Milla beating the shit out of Sean Connery with a typewriter. My previous sentence's structure makes it ambiguous as to whether it is Milla or Sean Connery who possesses the typewriter, but rest assured that, in either case, Sean Connery will be hit with it repeatedly.
I think that the whole act of separating Milla Jovovich's movies into different franchises belies the point, which, as I have firmly established, is Milla Jovovich = sexy feminism. It would make more sense to establish her entire body of work as its own genre and title each film by what she is fighting. Sort of like the Godzilla movies.
So, I hope you'll all join me for my next movie night, which will feature such classics as Milla Jovovich Fights Aliens and Milla vs. the Zombies parts 3 and 4. I don't know about you, but I'm really excited for the upcoming WWE crossover, Milla vs. Dwayne "The Rock" Jonhson, where they actually team up to fight John Cena and the ghost of "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Ooh yeah!
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