Resident Evil: Retribution Movie Review

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved video games and action movies and apparently so does Hollywood. Action movies and video games just seem to go together in some form or another, despite many who believe that reality or realistic scenarios are much better. Ever since the beginning of video games, developers have tried to push the bar making games more and more real. Real graphics, real interaction, real story lines that draw a player into the world, environment, into the game itself. Likewise with film, movies try to do much of the same while still keeping you on your toes. Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson has since the beginning of his film-making career, clearly always been a proprietor of the video game experience – and yet with all the Resident Evil films he’s never really been able to achieve a firm balance to create a hold-on-to-your-seat-for-dear-life movie going experience.

Resident Evil: Retribution, the fifth installment in the horror-action videogame based franchise, again follows the mighty heroine Alice (once again played by Milla Jovovich). This time around we find Alice waking up trapped in a subterranean Umbrella Corp testing facility beset on all sides by enemies. With a little help from an old foe, Alice is able to escape her holding cell, only to discover she must battle her way out through multiple T-virus outbreak simulation testing environments. Therein she discovers many more horrible secrets about the monopolizing Umbrella and all of the familiar faces she keeps encountering (Michelle Rodriguez, Sienna Guillroy, Oded Fehr, and Colin Salmon to name a few). An extraction team has been sent in the help Alice, including Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) and Leon Kennedy.

I won’t delve too deep into spoilers so I don’t ruin the film for those who have enjoyed the series, however the best thing by far about this movie is that Anderson has ceased to delude himself into thinking that he needs to try and inject sentiment into his movies to make them any good. I mean sure there’s some emotion from Alice as she tries to comprehend seeing her formerly deceased friends trying to kill her. Or another subplot involving a little deaf girl that just screams Resident Evil 6, but the basis of this entire movie is the action, violence, gore, and firepower. The real answer to creating the perfect balance between the movie and the videogame is hook up a game system to that IMAX projector, put an über-nerd behind the controls, and let the audience come watch him do his thing. When will that happen? Well your guess is as good as mine but until it does, Retribution does just enough to satisfy.