I wanted to like this movie.
ynopsis? Claire Redfield is caught up in another biohazard scare, and luckily Leon S. Kennedy comes to the rescue again. In fact a lot of the story feels like recycled Resident Evil 2 story. Leon and Claire get separated, Leon finds another woman to pal around with, and they find a monster to battle.
I wanted to like this movie. I also wanted to like every other Resident Evil film that has been made. Did I? Not exactly. I mean, I enjoyed this film a million times more than I enjoyed those Milla Jovivich iterations in the series, but I still found this to be less than exciting. The movie starts off with a montage of news reports clueing the viewer in on the happenings of previous Resident Evil games. Something about the overuse of news montages is really starting to affect my viewership lately. I feel like every movie I see attempts to use this (Frost/Nixon, MILK, etc). From the beginning the viewer is saddled with an annoying child-in-a-crisis situation, which is one of my least favorite film clichés, so that already hurt my viewing quality. I dug how the film brought us into zombie action right off the bat, and think the first half hour of this film is probably the best portion, by far.
The film practically grinds to a halt after the first half hour.After Claire, Leon, and the rest of the gang get out of danger, the film practically grinds to a halt for the next twenty minutes. A bit of backstory is thrown onto the characters I already didn't care about, with very little plot progression in sight. Frederic Downing, an Albert Wesker/Stephen Colbert mash-up, is voiced by the great Crispin Freeman, so it's a shame his character is so uninteresting. He's just another long-winded baddie in this series of long-winded baddies. Eventually, Curtis Miller, the brother of a character introduced earlier, decides to spice the film up with a terrorist attack. He practically levels the building Claire is in, but she remains unharmed (except for some random piece of glass that jumps into her leg). She finds her way to safety like all good Redfields.
The rest of this film plays like an ending of any Resident Evil game. A stupid-looking monster, deformed from a virus cleverly codenamed one letter of the alphabet (e.g.,T virus, G Virus, etc.), attacks the main characters for pretty much their entire escape. Escape from what, you ask? Well, escape from the detonation sequence that almost always accompanies any climactic moment in a story. Haven't you played Resident Evil before? To be honest, the ending was pretty annoyingly recycled, and had more self-destruct sequences than Frieza had forms in Dragon Ball Z. The film finished pretending to be a boss battle, and then wrapped up with some cheesiness. What I want to know is: Why did they have the final scene? There was no point in showing some guy putting a piece of infected Why not close on the main characters, instead of on some clichéd garbage?material in a box because Claire and Leon just said nothing was over. Why foreshadow what's already been foreshadowed? Why not close on the main characters of the story, instead of on some clichéd garbage of a scientist closing a briefcase? Not a fan of the decision-making behind this film.
I wanted to enjoy this film because I'm a huge fan of the Resident Evil series, but being such a huge fan, I was able to see the many recycled moments of the series thrown in. I wish I could say this film blew me away, but it's hardly anything to get excited over as a fan of the series. I can't recommend this film to anyone, but I really wanted to. If you really, absolutely love Resident Evil more than any other game you've ever played . . . go play it. Watch this movie only if you're one of those people and your hands are broken.
Rating: Skip it.
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