RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION (2012)
Tagline: When our world ends their final battle begins.
(Action, Sci-Fi, The Clone Wars) [R]
How do you think Umbrella populates these test scenarios? Hundreds of people dead each time they run a simulation. Umbrella imprints them with basic memories, just enough to ensure a correct emotional response to the threat of the bio-hazard. In one life, she could be a suburban housewife. The next, a businesswoman in New York. The next, a soldier working for Umbrella.
Okay, so back in 2013 I wrote a review for this thing that I disagree with so much now, that I had to rewrite the entire review. Just goes to show how your thoughts about things can change over time. I am going to go off on some reviewers' reviews because I don’t know what the actual (insert negative word here) some of you were thinking when you trashed this thing. You clearly were not watching the same damn movie I was. Certainly, you are entitled to your opinions, but wow…just freakin wow.
In this one Umbrella has taken Alice and killed many of the people she helped rescue at the end of AFTERLIFE. She is being constantly tortured for information by Jill Valentine who is now under the control of Umbrella via an advanced scarab device. Alice is rescued by Ada Wong who infiltrates the main Umbrella headquarters based in Russia with the help of Albert Wesker who has turned against Umbrella and the Red Queen. It doesn’t take long before Alice is introduced to the “testing floor” where Umbrella has been using clones to simulate outbreaks in various environments. A small band of resistance fighters is making an attempt to get Ada and Alice out of the massive facility, but new enemies arise and new bonds are formed.
For me, this was the single best RESIDENT EVIL movie we got. People can get pissed all they want, but this thing is just nothing but a total blast from start to finish. Really the only characters I missed were Chris and Claire Redfield. They are mentioned in the movie but neither is actually in the film and no explanation is given as to where they are. This is kind of the same issue a few of the later UNDERWORLD films had when Michael suddenly vanished. I don’t know the names for all the cool stuff we see in this movie, but there are like giant freakin creatures with like “brain” looking heads, we have giant axe-wielding pyramid headed looking biohazards, we have zombies that look like they are freakin Nazis. It’s out of control. Not to mention they managed to bring back a lot of the characters we loved from the earlier films via clones. So yeah, that actually means Michelle Rodriguez is back not as just one character but 2 playing 2 completely different clones of Rain from the first movie. She kills it doing both roles.
Acting-wise, we also get Bingbing Li (THE MEG) as Ada Wong and she also does a great job. Apparently, at least at that time, her Chinese accent was so thick, that even though she could speak English they dubbed her voice anyway. Lame. I am a big fan of Bingbing Li so anytime she shows up in a blockbuster I am there. Sienna Guillory is back as Jill Valentine, but if I have any complaints about this movie it’s that they didn’t just keep her old outfit or something similar. What she is wearing in this movie looks like it got stolen from an 80s exercise video. I also thought that Aryana Engineer (ORPHAN) did an extremely good job as Becky but it looks like she dropped out of acting altogether after 2015. Boris Kodjoe is back as Luther and is probably even better in this one than he was in AFTERLIFE. If there are any script choices I think I would have liked to have seen changed it would be how they handled “One” who is played by Colin Salmon. He is just way too good an actor to be on screen for less than 5 minutes of the movie. The same goes for Oded Fehr who returns to the role of Carlos. Even if they were both just clones, you have to give these guys more time to shine. It should also go without saying that Milla Jovovich is always epic as Alice.
We get a pretty epic score for this thing and the pacing is phenomenal. As far as the effects this one actually won the Canadian Screen Award for Achievement in Visual Effects and for once I agree with an entity that gave out an award so I don’t want to hear it.
Overall this was the crème de la crème of all RESIDENT EVIL movies and it gets a 7 out of 7. That just tells you how awesome this movie was because I hate clones and this movie is loaded with them. I mean why? Why do we have so many clones…where does all the food come from? Are they cloning the food? What the heck are they doing to the food?
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF CONSTANTIN FILM AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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