Following the battle on the Arcadia ship, Alice was captured by Jill Valentine and taken to a facility of the Umbrella Corporation located under the ice. Waking up naked and unarmed, Alice receives a message from her enemy Albert Wesker who tells her that a rescue unit is arriving to save her: it was Wesker himself who sent it to remove the woman from the captivity of the Red Queen, the artificial intelligence that has taken control of Umbrella and wants to eliminate Alice in every way, the only project that escaped the control of the Corporation.
Now the cinematic saga of "Resident Evil" seems to have become a TV series: each chapter starts exactly where the previous one ended and ends with a cliffhanger that announces the next one! The fifth episode of the saga, "Resident Evil: Retribution", after the successful box office performance of the previous "Resident Evil: Afterlife", confirms Paul W.S. Anderson as the director of the entire series and the use of massive 3D that goes hand in hand with numerous spectacular scenes.
The fans of the Capcom video game from which it all began know that with the cinematic saga it is not a feast for cats and that from chapter to chapter it has turned towards a smashing action cinema rather than towards horror (and the console saga has suffered dangerously from this), we are used to this fact. But "Resident Evil: Retribution" confirms that trend started with "Afterlife" itself in which action has an annoying predominance over everything else and for 90 minutes the viewer is stunned by an uninterrupted sequence of explosions, shootings and hand-to-hand combat. Just as happened in the previous chapter, there is practically no story to follow and everything seems like a huge advertising spot, ultra-polished and stylish to the extreme.
If we want, a small improvement compared to "Resident Evil: Afterlife" has been made because the action scenes are more varied and better choreographed. Although there is an abundance of slow motion, the smodato use of bullet time from matrixiana memory is fortunately abandoned in favor of more imaginative combat that takes advantage of a good variety of locations and enemies/monsters. There is also an improvement in the visual aspect, since a more skillful use of the green screen is made for the construction of the backgrounds, always massive but less evident, also thanks to a photographic care with a less "color correction shifted to gray/brown" effect.
Alas, the characters that appear in "Retribution" are as usual the shadow of a shadow of a non-characterized character, as unfortunately happens firmly from the second chapter onwards and continues the timely destruction/denial of the characteristic characters of the video game. After throwing Claire Redfield, Jill Valentine and especially the bad Chris Redfield played by Wentworth Miller into the mix without a real reason, this time Leon Kennedy, Ada Wong and Barry Burton are thrown in, whom the followers of the video game well know. If Ada has a figurative relevance with the original character (although it must be said that dressed in that way she clashes decidedly with the context of the film), Leon and Barry are two among many, part of the rescue team that goes to recover Alice and devoid of any characterization.
Curious is the structure that builds the film, initially unnecessarily complex, composed on different levels that we soon discover are nevertheless unified. It starts with a long action sequence mounted in reverse and slowed down that serves as a connection with "Afterlife" and anticipates the usual recap of the previous episodes entrusted to Alice's voice over (here supported by images). The problem of connections with the past having been solved, we find ourselves in a strange context that recalls in a too suspicious way the beginning of "Dawn of the Dead", a long and beautiful sequence, which brings back on screen many characters seen in the past of the saga and deceased: the Carlos Olivera of Oded Fehr, the Rain Ocampo of Michelle Rodriguez and even One, the team leader of the first "Resident Evil", always played by Colin Salmon. Then we proceed as if we were really in an action video game, with the division into levels, the enemies to be defeated and the bosses to be overcome to move on to the next frame. In this vertical film structure we will find always different scenarios that refer to cities of the world (New York, Tokyo, Moscow...) and characteristic enemies, such as the inevitable zombies (even in a variant of an armed and motorized Russian soldier!), the huge spiked executioners seen in "Resident Evil: Afterlife" and in the video game "Resident Evil 5" and a gigantic licker that seems to mimic the T-Rex of "Jurassic Park".
Of course, if you turn off your brain... or rather, you put it in a vegetative state... you still have fun, but you get the feeling that Anderson had no idea what to tell. An accumulation of action, always more spectacular, always more exaggerated, always more elaborate that fills a single narrative block that does not exist and that almost serves as a link to the grand finale of the next film.
Milla Jovovich is the undisputed queen of the film and the franchise, here flanked by a valid Sienna Guillory in the role of the bad Jill Valentine and by a Michelle Rodriguez who is below par and visibly lazy. The cast is completed by Johann Urb ("Dirt"; "Eastwick") who plays an anonymous Leon Kennedy physically more similar to Sawyer from "Lost" than to the video game character, Li Bingbing ("The Forbidden Kingdom"; "Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame") who is a caricatured Ada Wong, Kevin Durand ("Real Steel"; "Smokin Aces") as Barry Burton and the inexpressive Boris Kodjoe who returns to play the basketball player Luther West, here mysteriously promoted to a seven-killer soldier.
The 3D does a good job of depth and relief, with frequent moments in which projectiles and all sorts of weapons are hurled towards the viewer.
The film, all in all, is evanescent like a ghost, pure entertainment that flows quickly and leaves little. Surely it will make happy the fans of Milla Jovovich and the most ardent supporters of the cinematic saga of "Resident Evil", all the others can pass, aware however that a sixth (and perhaps last) film has already been announced.
Take away half a brain absolutely.
Comments
Comments (0)
Comments