Film Reaction: RESIDENT EVIL RETRIBUTION

WEARING.  TOO MANY.  GODDAMN.  BUCKLES.

It took me a while to decide whether or not there was much point in doing a write-up of my experience watching Retribution, the latest in what is still, mind-bogglingly enough, the most successful videogame-to-film series of all time.  This is mainly due to fatigue with the series and the attitude of its architects - every time  a new film comes out, professional critics and simple fans alike express in many cases the same grievances, and every time series overseer Paul W.S. Anderson politely sticks his fingers in his ears, smiling mildly at the okay box office returns which more than double whatever the film cost to make.  Then it's back on the merry-go-round for another whirl, with the script blithely tying itself in knots to explain (or not explain) the absence of characters from the last film and sudden appearance of replacements.

That said, after leaving this blog to rot for far too long, I feel the need to continue my current activity levels, and while Retribution certainly fell into a few of the same pits as its predecessors, it also found new, hitherto-unknown ways to fail, too.  And who says innovation is dead?

WARNING:  SPOILERS FOLLOW.

The Plot:  If you were lucky enough to have something else worth doing in your life besides watching Resident Evil Afterlife, this film's predecessor, then don't worry, because - in a recurring trend - Alice (Milla Jovovich) starts off Retribution by talking you through the story of all 4 (!) previous films up 'til this point.  They're even recycling the same four or five starting lines they've been using since Apocalypse (film number 2), and Jovovich's delivery is still more lifeless than the shambling, moaning freaks she'll spend much of the next 90 minutes shooting and kicking.  There's also no explanation given in the film as to when Alice recorded this particular monologue, or why she's staring straight into the camera as she speaks.  Maybe she's Skyping with Chris and Claire Redfield (previously Wentworth Miller and Ali Larter), who have up and vanished between the end of Afterlife and the start of Retribution, even though things kick off literally two minutes after the close of film 4 and we're in the same exact location, on a boat surrounded by evil Umbrella Corporation helicopters and argh.  Okay, calm down, save the bile for later.  Despite putting up a fight with her coin-firing shotguns (long story), Alice is knocked overboard and captured, then wakes up with ginger hair in a suburban two-storey home, with a deaf daughter and Carlos Oliveira (Oded Fehr) as her husband.  Carlos, who she was never married to, who died in movie 3.  And trust me, that dude died hard.  Shit feels so weird here, it's actually a relief when zombies show up and start butchering people.  Alice flees with the daughter - I'm just gonna call her Fluffy, I honestly cannot remember the character's name now - and briefly crosses paths with Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), who is also somehow neither dead nor the massively grumpy bitch she was back in movie 1, before being killed.  Huh.  Short movie.

Of course, this is all one enormous 'cold open', and we return to proper Alice, now wearing essentially two large Kleenex sheets and little else (and it's telling of how much this series has already objectified its heroine that I didn't react to this at all), stuck in a huge neon vault with the floor designed like the Umbrella logo, just in case you forgot which film you were watching.  She's overseen by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), now sporting blonde hair and a little purple number I'm sure doesn't belong to someone else, who pesters her with the same questions over and over in a chillingly dispassionate voice.  Salvation (and a wacky S&M skinsuit) arrive when the lights suddenly die and the vault unlocks, allowing Alice to escape deeper into the facility.  After bumping into Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) and indulging in one of Anderson's favourite standbys - copying cutscenes from the Resi games move-for-move just to prove he's played them - Alice has a quick webcam chat with Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), who tells her that he's left Umbrella, that the company is now controlled by the eeeevil Red Queen computer, and she's locked in an underground field testing range for B.O.W.s that Wesker would actually like to free her from, because he totally needs her help now and isn't just saying that so he can try and eat her again.

...no, seriously, Wesker's main objective in the last film was to try and eat Alice alive so he could inherit her powers.  Alas, no cannibalism for him this time.

Umbrella's branding remains as subtle and unobtrusive as ever.

The Good:  Well...the movie did not physically cause me pain?

No, really, there were some points worth mentioning here.  First of all, the score, by 'Tomandandy' (no idea) is pretty fantastic.  There's a very simple, short theme that plays for a lot of the more quiet, 'dramatic' scenes and captures the haunting nature that the film is otherwise struggling to project, and has a pleasingly sci-fi otherworldly ring to it.  It's not unlike the work Daft Punk did for the Tron Legacy soundtrack, and that's some very high praise coming from me.

Another plus point for me was Kevin Durand as Barry Burton.  I have zero clue why Anderson or anyone involved in this felt the fifth movie was the perfect time to introduce a supporting character from the first game, and there is no real justification given as to Barry's presence here; he's merely part of a team of mercenaries or somesuch hired by Wesker to break into the field-test lab and facilitate Alice's escape, along with Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb) and Luther West from Afterlife (Boris Kodjoe).  But dammit if he doesn't turn out to be the best character in the whole film, and the reason for that is Durand letting his personality rise above Anderson's typically flat dialogue.  Barry gets a few pleasingly dumb quips in amongst his lines (some of which may well have been ad-libbed), but even when he's not joking Durand invests the character with winning touches, like his drawling seen-it-all voice or chewing on a half-done cigar in the middle of a gunfight.  His death scene is also the most hilarious fist-pumping moment of outright silliness in the whole film, and the only time where the series' penchant for slow-motion editing actually compliments the action.

Speaking of silliness, this has always been a sticking point with these films for me.  See, the Resi games, despite being relatively sophisticated big-budget affairs by gaming standards, have always had the narrative style and tone of a schlocky B-movie; indeed, much of the first game's content was an affectionate homage to cheap, gory zombie horror flicks of Dario Argento and other such masters of the macabre.  By comparison, the films have always skewed far too heavily towards making things serious, which takes away from what should be a fun premise.  Occasionally though, Retribution lets its hair down and a glimpse of another, better movie sneaks in.  Like when the source of the many clones in the film is revealed, and it turns out to have millions of Michelle Rodriguezes and Oded Fehrs hanging on cyber-meathooks attached to conveyor belts shaped like helter-skelters.  It's like Umbrella is actually going to turn them into frickin' Cybermen. (and THAT would be a movie I'd unreservedly recommend) Or when Leon and co. come under attack in a pretend version of Red Square from machine-gun-toting zombies.  Who are all dressed like old-school Russian soldiers.  And can ride motorcycles.  We are given no explanation for this, it is just...presented to us.  Bike-ridin' machine-gunnin' Soviet undead.  Deal with it.

And since I'm a dork I should probably give them some points for translating various characters' outfits from the games in very literal styles, whether it makes any sense or not.  For the record, no, it doesn't.  Especially since all the Umbrella soldiers - plus Alice - wear lots of black leather and other dark materials, so when Ada shows up in her red dress or Jill in her purple suit the sudden contrasting influx of colour makes it seem like they've wandered in from the set of a different movie...

But still, Leon got his bomber jacket,  so *squeals*

The Bad:  First of all, I'll have to go on a slight tangent about the film's marketing, because in hindsight this annoys me.  A lot of posters and whatnot like this one here were part of the film's hype train, and bore the catchy tagline 'EVIL GOES GLOBAL'.  Except it doesn't, at least not in this film.  Yes, there are a bunch of different-looking locations in this movie, but they're simulations, fakes, and introduced to us as such practically right from the off.  And yet, this is never mentioned in the theatrical trailers or the posters (maybe it came up in later TV spots, I haven't seen them), and frankly the outright lie pisses me off.  A global-scale zombie war would potentially be a damn good film; a pretend global-scale zombie war, not so much.

Continuing on that theme, it's safe to say that nothing of consequence happens in this film.  At all.  Say whatever you like about the previous 4 movies, at least each one felt like a significant step along a journey, a logical progression in the ongoing plot of the Resi flicks.  Film 1, Alice is stuck in an underground lab, fighting to escape, gradually learning the cause as she goes.  Film 2, the whole of Raccoon City has fallen, Jill knows the reasons why and has to leave.  Film 3, worldwide epidemic, pretty much the apocalypse happened, Alice now an embittered soul wandering the highways, fighting against an unending tide because she's got nothing else left to do except die.  Film 4, a TV channel showing supposedly 'cult classic' movies, and also the one where a glimmer of hope appears and Alice runs for it, only for it to be cruelly dashed by the primary madman responsible for all of this.  Film 5?  Well, Alice is trapped in another underground facility, run by the same evil computer as the first one, and has to escape.  Again.  She has no greater objective than that and learns nothing new.  There is a tangible sense as you watch that this is a franchise spinning its wheels, blowing a lot of money and effort on nothing but setup for the next movie, which at this point we'll just have to take on faith will be an improvement.

Next, the cast.  A lot of the anticipation (in certain circles, circles I tend to back slowly away from without making eye contact) surrounding the film's release was based around the selection of returning cast members from past films, all playing characters who had previously died.  It wasn't hard for most to guess cloning or somesuch would be the solution (clones of Alice had already been introduced back in Extinction), but there was curiousity over what role they'd play in the film.  In short, they're pointless.  Both Fehr and Rodriguez get cute cameos as 'nice' civilian versions of their previous characters (the moment where Rodriguez pretends to hate and know nothing about guns is pretty hilarious given her history in this series and plenty other films), but spend most of their screen time as mentally conditioned Umbrella grunts - they even wear the same outfits as the more generic Umbrella soldiers, and their eventual demises have about the same resonance.  Worse luck for Colin Salmon (whose character in the first movie was just 'Squad Leader' - he had enough dialogue but was never named), who doesn't get a 'nice' version, just a cannon-fodder one.  Compared with Fast Five, which teamed up a ragtag squad from the previous Fast & Furious movies to play for fanservice, Retribution tries the same but bungles it due to simply putting no thought into what these people should be doing in the film.  At least in F-Five all of Vin Diesel's mates served some specific function in the overall plot.  So yes, this film makes a Fast & Furious movie look smart.  Yeesh.

To be clear: regardless of what I say next, I still like these people!

Especially the pretty ones.  Because they're pretty.

Sadly, however much the script lets the cast down, most of them feel like they could have tried harder with what they were given.  Jovovich at this point is a great action lead, with convincing body language and a steel-hard stare - and her quick turn as the 'civilian' Alice is a nice reminder that her proper acting chops are solid too - but the attempts to bring out the softer side of the true Alice seem to be beyond her.  She's given custody of Fluffy when she arrives in the pretend suburbia zone, in what is a blatant riff on the Ripley/Newt relationship in Aliens (there's even a bit where a Licker kidnaps Fluffy and sticks her to a wall with weird fleshy goo stuff - something the Lickers of the previous films have never shown a preference for...), but Jovovich just can't quite figure out how to present maternal kindness.  Not to mention the awkward logic involved in having her be protective of a clone kid based on no-one she's ever known, yet still have her shoot happily at the other clones who bear recognisable faces.  Bingbing Li was clearly dubbed in the final edit, so it's hard to really pick on her performance as a whole; she looks comfortable enough running in Ada's fairly silly outfit, but the character isn't put under enough stress one way or another to require an emotional stretch. The same could be said of Johann Urb, who desperately needs a touch of the dorky wisecracks uttered frequently by the Leon of the games.  Sienna Guillory appears to be attracting the lion's share of critics' flak from reviews I've seen, but I can't really blame her; Jill is a mind-controlled drone commanded by a computer, speaking lines from a writer who has always had difficulty getting individual character traits across without resorting to extremely dumb stereotypes (see Mike Epps in films 2 & 3).  Ergo, Guillory here basically plays a perma-scowling variant of Kristanna Loken's girl Terminator, with space-kung-fu.  It's not a position that allows for an actor's showcase, irrespective of how 'good' the actor may be.  She was certainly better playing the 'normal' Jill in Apocalypse, and the next one will hopefully let her return to that interpretation of the character.  As a final caveat, throughout the film I was struck by the notion that these actors must not have been very well-schooled in firearms handling for this movie, because the various scenes where gunfire is exchanged completely lack tension or believability; each actor steps out from cover on cue, fires a wild spray at something off-screen, then steps back as incoming fire chews up the wall behind them.  It's so mechanical I resorted to mentally adding the 'ACTION!' and 'RELOAD!' cues from Time Crisis to the soundtrack.

And then there's the direction.  Anderson wasn't always completely hopeless at this job; his work on Mortal Kombat, while not amazing per se (that film is carried largely by the screenplay, which he had no hand in), was at least competent enough to show the good stuff and not over-egg anything.  Since then, though, it feels like he's gotten progressively worse, and Retribution isn't going to change anything there.  He still can't find a way to enliven a dialogue scene, he doesn't understand that cameras can move without digital trickery or motion-sickness shaking, and the slow motion...my god, the slow motion.  The sheer volume of it.  Turn every slow-mo moment back up to normal speed in this movie and the running time would be slightly less than an hour, I'd wager.  Paul, dude, not everything that is cool needs to be turned into a slideshow.  In fact, it hurts the cool moments, as what was once a deftly-choreographed spot of melee zombie slaughter or climactic martial arts battle too often is broken down until the cracks between sequences are easy to spot - and the audience is taken 'out of the movie' as they are basically shown how this scene was put together, move by move.  That's a potentially interesting special feature for the Blu-Ray, but I don't want it in the theatrical version, thankyou.

The Verdict:  Can I call Retribution a good movie?  No.  Certainly not.  I'm not sure if I could call any of these films good (Extinction, maybe).  Can I recommend it to people who have seen the previous 4 and liked them?  Absolutely.  If you've never let the flaws apparent in the previous 4 detract from your enjoyment...please tell me how you did this, and know that this one will work for you just as well as Afterlife did, if not slightly more so.  That's basically my overall feel for this movie; it's more fun than its predecessor, yet also more of a waste of time.  It ticks off everything we expect from these movies now - Jovovich hitting things, leaden dialogue, zombies, Lickers, characters from the games just sort of showing up here and there without reason - and sometimes pushes those boundaries just a little, but it's never bold or brave enough to establish its own identity within the franchise.  Call it a 4 out of 10, or 'almost mediocre'.

Closing with this pic because I think it's pretty.