Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION (2012)

All right, it’s official. This series has hit the ‘milking’ stage, and believe me there is very little left in this zombified cows udders (it was either that or Alice’s breasts as a metaphor, ok?). Resident evil: Retribution is quite possibly the most frustrating installment yet. It really seems as though the filmmakers don’t give a crap about anything other than action sequences. Making sense helps in a movie as well. Now, there are some redeeming qualities that once again stop this from being quite as bad as ‘Apocalypse’. ‘Retribution’ at the very least kept me entertained (and annoyed at the same time).

Turns out that ‘fight for their lives’ Jill was talking about in ‘Afterlife’s’ post credits scene was only for 20 seconds. Alice is captured and taken to another of Umbrella’s facilities situated under water and ice. Alice teams up with Ada Wong, who is an associate of the now goody-two-shoes Albert Wesker, to make their way through the facilities city simulations (New York, Moscow, Raccoon city’s suburbia and Tokyo) and escape. A group of freelance operatives (that means more game characters used uselessly) infiltrate the base to assist them. Meanwhile Alice and Ada fight their way through all kinds biohazards that the Red Queen (artificial intelligence from the first film) uses to stop them, because she is a dumb bitch who hasn’t watched the last three movies. Meanwhile Jill and a bunch of returning characters track Alice and Ada through the facility. If they don’t get out in time, the whole facility will be flooded. I know you must be sick of me saying this, but it’s the SAME FUCKING PLOT OF THE FIRST MOVIE DONE AGAIN!

The attack on Arcadia that is played in reverse slow motion, then replayed at normal speed just in case we missed anything the first time.

 Things start off well enough, with an excellent suburbia sequence featuring a cloned Alice as a housewife. It’s quite scary and suspenseful; Alice is fairly defenseless and it really is jarring to see her struggle so much. It was a nice change for the series, before it quickly reverts back to non-stop action. A few characters from past films return here as clones, some with ‘good’ and ‘bad' ones, but it’s unclear as to why Umbrella cloned them in the first place. They include Rain, Carlos and ‘One’. It’s refreshing to see them around again, but these characters never get more than a few spoken lines. They seem to have no purpose and are chronically underused. Milla Jovovich does a great job of Alice here, redeeming her so-so performance in ‘Afterlife’ and delivering more one-liners than ever, which I loved. Tomandandy has done another great, if not as distinguished, score.

The suburbia sequence; probably the best part of the film for me.

The ‘corridor’ fight scene is good but, I know I sound like a broken record, this scene could have done with a ‘less is more’ attitude to wire stunts (although they don’t come off as hilariously bad as ‘Afterlife’s’). Some humour is scattered around the film, which is fitting. My favourite baddy, the Executioner, returns here in a New York simulation with a buddy this time, which I was extremely excited about. The sequence is short but oh so very sweet; would have been great to make it longer and add some cloned New Yorkers for our executioners to chop through (after all, these guys have serious gore potential that’s never properly utilised). Aryana Engineer does an amazing job as Becky, and she out performs the entire cast. We finally have a Licker return, but this time it’s a giant Licker that’s pretty good with the limited screen time it gets. I wish it could have stuck around for the finale. Resident evil: Retribution certainly uses less slow motion than ‘Afterlife’, thank goodness. Alice’s character certainly seems more vulnerable than she did in the previous installment; she gets her ass majorly kicked by Jill and ‘bad’ Rain in the finale. But WHY did Alice wait until the last possible moment to remove the ‘red scarab thingy’ from Jill? Why does Jill get her memory back in minutes when it took Claire several hours in ‘Afterlife’?. That brings us to the end of what’s ‘good’ about Retribution; strap your selves in for some grumpy groaning!

From left to right: Luther West returns (Boris Kodjoe), Becky (Aryana Engineer), Alice (Milla Jovovich), 'good' Rain in the background (Michelle Rodriguez) and Leon S. Kennedy (Johann Urb)

Most of this film’s negatives can be linked with its short runtime and serious lack of dialogue. It’s pretty clear major cuts where made to the film to make it 80% action. This was confirmed when the script was released, which had MUCH more dialogue between characters and more explanations of things that ended up not making much sense. First things first; what the fuck is with the subtitle ‘Retribution’? Alice has been after retribution since the second half of the first Resident evil movie, so why call it Resident evil: Retribution other than to sound cool? The attack on Arcadia is in reverse slow motion for the opening credits, which certainly wasn’t as good as ‘Afterlife’s’ credits sequence. And WHERE THE HELL IS CLAIR, CHRIS AND K-MART? It’s unbelievably frustrating when continuity errors show up two minutes into the movie. The makers of these films just get rid of characters whenever it suits them, and we are never given an explanation.

"What are you gonna do, lick me to death?" LICKER: "YES".

Alice, sweety, WE KNOW YOUR DAMN NAME IS ALICE. She doesn’t have to say that at the beginning of every frickin movie. This is followed by an un-necessary re-cap that’s basically the same as ‘Apocalypse’s’ with a few more bits added. Sienna Guillory’s performance as Jill is surprisingly bad, especially as she was fine in Resident evil: Apocalypse. My guess is bad directing and her trying too hard to be robotic while under the control of the Red Queen. The marketing for Retribution was extremely misleading and poor on Sony’s behalf. Sony’s plot synopsis states Alice “unveils more of her mysterious past”, which is complete and utter bullshit. That would mean story advancement, for which there is none. The posters also had the tagline ‘evil goes global’. Hasn’t evil already gone global since Resident evil: extinction?! Pure laziness. It was also suggested Alice was traveling around the world, but turns out these places are just simulations in another bloody Umbrella facility (as you can see in the trailer at the bottom of the review). Some posters even used the tagline ‘Alice in wasteland’, which is akin to kicking a dead zombie horse that’s already died twice. Its cruel.

HOLY CRAP, and is that Jackie Chan?! Oh wait, he is Chinese not Japanese...awkward...

One of these simulations re-uses Resident evil: Afterlife’s opening credits scene in Tokyo, which, AGAIN, is never explained and makes no sense. Alice’s new “S and M getup” is pretty average. I’m no expert on shoes, but WHY THE FUCK does Alice wear wedged high-heals? They don’t seem at all practical for running away from zombies in the slightest. I didn’t care about Ada Wong’s dubbing (the actress had a strong Chinese accent which they apparently didn’t like) as much as everyone else, but why did she choose a skimpy, revealing dress when she was rescuing someone from such a cold climate (not to mention the high-heels)?. Although I’ve got to say, it was a nice reminder of Alice’s classic red dress (even though Alice's red dress was actually inspired by Ada's from the games).

"Lets stand here shooting at these guys with our never ending ammo instead of running past them! that always looks cooler!"

Wait a minute… Wesker is on the good side now? WHAT? Alice did not seem surprised or confused in the slightest with this or him being alive (as she didn't see the parachute at the end of 'Afterlife' as we did). She just seemed to brush it off like it was just another day in the zombie apocalypse. Never mind that Wesker quite literally wanted to eat her last time they met. We get more terribly used game characters, with these being the most poorly developed yet. No one was happy about this. The gamers where appropriately outraged that their favorite characters where given barely supporting roles with 3 lines of dialogue, and everyone else didn’t care for them due to their insignificance to the story. The problem here is they could have kept Chris and Claire with no problems instead of introducing more characters. They also decided to change the look of the Red Queen, causing even more continuity problems, and use some of her lines from Resident evil with cringe worthy results.

Meet 'bad' Rain. don't mess with her; she will fuck your shit up.

The action scenes are a mixed bag. Personally, I’m not a fan of long shoot-outs and car chases, of which there are a few. People only get shot when it suits the movie, even though bullets are sprayed in every direction.  Despite being a company that practically controls the world and causes a zombie apocalypse, Umbrella sucks at Photoshop. Hm. I lost count of all the slow motion bullets as they lost their effect, and some seriously bad CGI blood is used. Returning characters are killed far too randomly and quickly. Just when I thought ‘Afterlife’ had no story advancement, ‘Retribution’ comes along and tops it by being even more redundant. The ‘Aliens’ references/ripping-off….Anderson, get over it; Alien vs. Predator sucked. Leave it alone, because making a Licker kill everyone then take a little kid to cocoon her makes no sense. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, ALICE GETS HER POWERS BACK. Nooooo! Why would they get rid of them in the last movie, only to give them back? It just comes out of nowhere and reeks of the filmmaker’s indecisiveness (as does Wesker being a good guy). However, there is hope! The cliffhanger ending here, characteristic of the series and getting a little annoying by this point, is quite good and promises an epic ‘final’ installment in the series.

Here we have Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) in her outrageously inappropriate attire, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) who looks like Violet from Willy Wonka after she was squeezed, then we have 'One' (Colin Salmon) in the background and Carlos (Oded Fehr) next to our evil juiced blueberry girl.

I wasn’t surprised with the quality Resident Evil: Retribution, although I desperately wanted to be proved wrong. I’m still tossing up what to score this movie, but for now I’m giving it the same score as ‘Afterlife’. Like I stated before, ‘Retribution’ still kept me more entertained than the stale ‘Apocalypse’. I’m really hoping Anderson and everyone else involved with Resident Evil 6 do some serious explaining, expand on the story and actually tie up everything without a damn cliffhanger. I look forward to seeing…uh…whatever that chicks name is in the FINAL Resident Evil movie. Ah well, I’m sure they will remind me exactly who she is at the start of Resident Evil 6. It started with an ‘A’, right?

2/5

Recommended classification: 15+ for frequent strong bloody stylised horror/action violence and some coarse language

The misleading trailer in question: