Resident Evil – Retribution: Oh Wow, These People Just Have to Be Making This Up As They Go Along…

Director Paul W.S. Anderson has got to admit that he is an addict.  And like any addiction, the desperation worsens, irrationality sets in, and the personal trauma unfolds for all those forced to witness.  Evidently, he is addicted to making more and more Resident Evil films no matter how bad they get; observers can only stand by and watch in horror as Retribution unfolds on screen into a calamitous, painful mess that will leave few unhurt in its wake.

Premise: Alice teams with the resistance against the Umbrella Corporation and zombies. Result: This movie was about something, or so they tell us, but it is not clear what really.  But who cares.

On some level, Anderson should be commended.  After all, Afterlife, his fourth film in the series, had, if nothing else, proven to be one of the more messy, boring, preposterous action-horror films to date.  And yet somehow, Retribution is much worse.   After an interesting, promising opening sequence beautifully played backwards, there was the hope that this film would rebound the franchise from the rim of that precarious drain.

Of course, in an act of cruelty perhaps, Anderson shows us a glimpse of intriguing art, and then promptly replaces it with a smolder bag of dog sh$t. First, there is happy Alice (Milla Jovovich), sleeping in bed, awakened by her loving husband (Oded Fehr) beginning a long line of unnecessary cameos.  She is also a mom to hearing-impaired Becky (Aryana Engineer).  But expectedly, zombies attack and everything goes to hell.  It is literally “déjà vu all over again.”

Next, we are plunged into darkness only to find Alice in an interrogation cell, mostly naked but for a scanty cloth that appears to serve no purpose other than to barely keep an R-rating.   She is interrogated by brainwashed Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) -who popped out suddenly at the end of the last film- and then promptly tortured when she fails to respond to the question, “Who are you working for?”  Why Jill is asking this question defies all logic: Umbrella knows Alice, they know her motives – there have been too many movies for them not to know. Alice seems confused too since she can’t even coinsure a response.

But then, inexplicably, all systems are shut down temporarily and she escapes.  She is plunged into a Tokyo sequence and manages to fight off dozens of zombies that seem to come out of the walls.  We have seen this, too, of course.  Then she finds herself in the Umbrella control room where all employees are dead but bumps into former Umbrella agent Ada Wong (Bingbing Li), appropriately dressed to kick butt and walk the cat walk.

Then comes the bombshell: she is working with Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), who suddenly needs her.  To be fair, it is unclear how long Alice was unconscious; however, this twist is too nonsensical to accept.  Wesker, who is a mutated horror that was the arch-enemy in the last film is now suddenly on Alice’s side?  And why?  Oh, because The Red Queen, the foe then friend then foe has suddenly decided to eradicate all life on Earth.  How convenient.

The rest of the film is yet another permutation of the “escape” narrative that seems the only plotline Anderson can manage.  Here, a team including Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb), and Barry Burton (Kevin Durand) among others, storm the Red Queen’s fortress off the coast of Kampuchea and establish a timeline of two hours for the rescue.  What ensues if a Resident Evil Anniversary special, welcoming back all the familiar friends and villains of the past including Rain (Michelle Rodriguez), Carlos, more zombies, The giant Axe Men, more Red Queen, the horrible mutated creatures that look like giant burnt dogs, and the reintroduction of Las Plagas.

There are a few mildly entertaining fight sequences but ultimately this film is a poorly strung together version of all the previous films.  At best, the film is a somber series of dull, repetitive action sequences, poor decisions and cheap thrills that feel stale and unoriginal; at worst, this film is a money-laundering scheme by Anderson that barely looks like a movie at all, rather, instead a grafted version of edited scenes from previous film with no interest in continuity or reason.

The acting as a whole is awful.  Jovovich is passable but again suffers from the obscene dialogue; Bingbing is just her Asian doppelganger, uttering lines with equal discomfort and giving sense that she belongs somewhere, anywhere else.  Rodriguez has to play multiple characters, and seems ill satisfied with any of them.  But she is still a badass.  The men, as an essentialized class of combatants are passable, but won’t live long in memories.

Ultimately, this film does nothing in the way of making sense or instilling any intrigue or satisfaction.  It is boring throughout and seems like it was scribbled on a cocktail napkin that was used to film the movie directly without a thought to what the end result might be.  Oh what a long way we have fallen from the original film: frankly, Ed Wood may have made a better movie with a similar budget and technology.

Rating: 2 – Boxed wine and Razorblades – let’s see which kills you faster!

Top 7 Bad-Ass Female Characters

Seven is the mythical number of perfection and so it is only fitting that this is the number of Characters selected for the honor of “Bad-Ass” Female Characters.  Listed below are seven of the most influential action-oriented female characters in film over the past half Century.  Each character must be notable for her action scenes, dramatic composure under pressure, ability to inspire and lead others either through courage or fear, and exhibit independence as a woman.

It is important to note that while the actress is often inextricably linked to the Character she plays, the highlight here is first for the Character herself.

 

 The Seven Most Bad-Ass Female Characters

 

Ellen Ripley (Alien Series) – Sigourney Weaver

For nearly twenty years, Ellen Ripley has reigned as one of the most formidable female power houses in film.  Debuting in 1979’s Alien, Ripley became a perfect model for power, as she battled the horror that destroyed her crew.  Ripley evolved as a character over the course of the films, becoming not only a strong female lead for the burgeoning Sigourney Weaver, but a legend in Science Fiction film as a woman capable of rivaling male contemporaries for sheer demonstrable awesomeness.  Her battle with the Alien Queen in the final moments of Aliens still polls as one of the most memorable action scenes in film history; or perhaps most quoted, as Ripley attacked the Queen with the immortal words, “Get away from her you bitch!” as audiences cheered uncontrollably.

In her next two films, Alien3 and Alien Resurrection, Ripley continued to grow as a character, defying all expectations as the central heroine.  Stopping at nothing, Ripley not only (spoiler alert!) destroyed herself to defeat the evil Alien Queen growing inside her and prevent The Company from taking it for their own sinister purposes, she also managed to resurrect as a clone hybrid of both herself and the Queen she had destroyed in previous film.  While the latter two films were the weaker in the series, the evolution of the character as a can-do-no-wrong badass is one of the most remarkable in film history.  While the Alien may have been the rightful Queen, Ellen Ripley reigns supreme among contemporaries.

Awards and Nominations:

This role garnered 8 nominations including an Academy Award Nomination for best Actress in Aliens. While Weaver only took home the Saturn Award for Best Actress (1986), the number and caliber of nominations itself is impressive for a role in Science Fiction, previously not considered a core film market. Specifically, Weaver as Ripley landed One Oscar nomination, one Golden Globe nomination, 4 Saturn Award nominations (including her 1986 win), one BAFTA nomination and a Blockbuster Entertainment award nomination.

 

Sarah Connor (Terminator/ T2) – Linda Hamilton

While Weaver’s Ripley may sit atop this list, it was certainly a tough call when compared with Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor (while there was a series based on Sarah Connor, the focus here is the film Character.) Like Ripley, Connor was faced with a seemingly invincible foe: the Terminator machines.  These robotic monsters destroyed everything in their path, except of course, for Connor, who managed to evolve into a machine of her own, not only escaping the threat, but serving as a formidable menace herself.

In the first film, Terminator, Sarah Connor evolves from woman into bad-ass super hero, able to eventually conquer and destroy the classic Terminator (then played by Arnold Schwarzenegger – who frankly looks scary as a human!) However, her evolution is complete in the second film, T2: Judgment Day, rivaling Aliens as one of the all-time best science fiction films. Here, she has become, even locked away in a padded cell, one of the most intimidating action personas in film, managing to escape from her cell and elude guards with cunning and raw power, all while never crumpling her pjs. Ever the matriarch, she manages a mixture of raw emotional power, vulnerability and cunning to generate one of the most impressive roles.  You believe her horror and her pain, giving up her life to save her son and the world.

Awards and Nominations:

Unlike Weaver, Hamilton was never recognized for this role (she was for other characters) in any major award categories, but did manage to garner 4 nominations and three wins: while only nominated for the 1985 Saturn Award for Best Actress for Terminator, she won the same award 7 years later for T2: Judgment Day and also managed to score the1992 MTV Movie Award Best Female Performance for: T 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Most Desirable Female.

 

The Bride (Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2) – Uma Thurmon

Unlike both Ripley and Connor, both of whom are as much heroes as victims on screen, Uma Thurman’s “The Bride” in the Kill Bill series is very much the master of her fate, choosing to take revenge on her enemies for a wrong done before. Hers is a future of calculated misery exacted on her unsuspecting prey, the band of monstrous female assassins she must destroy so that she can finally “Kill Bill.”

Played somewhat like a video game where villains are constructed and deconstructed by her clever maneuvers and laser-like precision, The Bride manages to evolve on screen as an unstoppable force herself, a killing machine every bit as ruthless and determined as the forces that conspire against her. Her battles against villains Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), Gogo Yubari (Chiaki Kuriyama), and O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) are every bit as momentous as they are disturbing. Director Tarantino also manages to weave in a story that gives her even more personal strength as her motivation for her onslaught is somehow justified, and her audiences watch willingly, tacitly supportive of her monstrous acts.

Awards and Nominations:

Thurman’s The Bride was nominated 6 times overall including back to back Golden Globes in 2004 and 2005 for Volume 1 and 2. She did manage to win the Saturn Award for Best Actress for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 in 2004) and receive further nominations for the Saturn Award for Best Actress for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2005), a BAFTA Film Award (2004), and a Critics Choice Award (2005).

 

Alice (Resident Evil Series) – Milla Jovovich

Much like The Bride who awakens to a nightmare she cannot recall, Milla Jovovich’s Alice finds herself in the center of a horrific conspiracy that pits her against zombies, mutants and the uber-evil Umbrella Corporation.  While timid and confused at first perhaps, Alice evolves into one of the most astonishing killing machines in all of Science Fiction.

Alice’s evolution over the course of the films rests not only on metaphors but on actual mutation as she becomes part of the experiment that is claiming the Earth.  By the time we reach the latter films, Alice is not only able to physically engage her enemies with an endless arsenal of kick-ass moves, but she has telekinetic powers so intense it could only have been imagined by J.K. Rowling. In one scene she even manages to stunningly engulf a vast murder of infected crows with a conjured wall of flames. There is no scene where audiences do not root for her and where she does not deliver.

Awards and Nominations

While it is apparent that Jovovich is far better acknowledged for her work in The Fifth Element, her Alice was able to garner a 2003 Saturn Award Nomination for Best Actress.

 

 Selene (Underworld Series) – Kate Beckinsale

Beckinsale’s Selene in the Underworld series (specifically Underworld and Underworld: Evolution) is one of the most elegant killing machines in recent film. Unlike The Bride or Alice, Selene, the graceful and powerful vampire warrior believes that she understands the world around her.  She recognizes the need to contain and destroy the Lycans, the historical arch-enemy of Vampires, and she does so with amazing skill.  She brandishes an endless arsenal of weapons, an impressive repertoire of combat moves a la Jackie Chan, and an imposing sense of will that immediately commands attention.  It should also be noted that she is the only non-human character considered on this list, and as a vampire, Selene brings not only a sense of terror but beauty that is common to all heroines.

Of course, her true test is when her world begins to crumble as the truth of her history – as well as the lies told about the war between the Lycan and Vampire- come to “light.”  Selene evolves from simply a powerful vampire in the first film into an unstoppable queen as she continues to protect her lover Michael Corvin from the true menace.  Due to Corvinus’s sacrifice in the second film, Underworld: Evolution, Selene becomes a more powerful vampire than ever before, enabling her to fight the true horror.

Awards and Nominations

Selene in Underworld posted one serious nomination in 2004 for the Saturn Best Actress award.  In addition, Beckinsale hit pay-dirt in the teenie-bopper demographic as Selene with a 2006 nomination for the Best Actress MTV Movie Award for Underworld: Evolution and then a Teen Choice Award (2004) nomination for Underworld (shared with Van Helsing; yes, really).

 

Cherry Darling (Grindhouse– Planet Terror) – Rose McGowan

While Rose McGowan may best be known for her villainous turn in Jawbreaker (1999) or on the TV series Charmed, she ought to receive praise for her completely bad-ass performance as Cherry Darling, the shotgun/peg-legged stripper at mortal war with zombies in Grindhouse – Planet Terror.  In Robert Rodriguez’s mortifying portrayal of a zombie-ridden apocalypse, he raises atop a metaphorical bad-ass pedestal a creation like none-other.

Cherry has her leg amputated after a horrific zombie assault and manages to escape with her life.  However, the amputation serves as a blessing in disguise.  In a completely over-the-top acrotomphiliac move, Rodriquez allows Darling to use her amputated stump as a Mr. Potato Head of unstoppable weaponry.  Once the machine tgun becomes her limb, even the zombies have nowhere to hide.  I could say more, but I think special kudos must be given to a woman who not only survives a zombie attack, but has her amputation stump become a gun.  That is, in fact, bad-ass.

Awards and Nominations

Unfortunately, Cherry may have been the darling of zombie fans, but the same cannot be said for awards.  McGowan as Cherry Darling managed only one nomination, Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress (2008) for Grindhouse.

 

Hit-Girl (Kick-Ass) – Chloë Moretz

In some ways perhaps the most controversial of all the nominees, Mindy Macready is really only a child, and an adorable one at that.  That is, of course, until she transforms into Hit-Girl, the ruthless, unstoppable, foul-mouthed standout of the 2010 film.  Moretz elicited much controversy due mainly to her toilet-mouth, spewing swearwords that even today’s liberal audiences found somewhat uncomfortable.  Of course, that was merely part of her charm.

Hit-Girl is unstoppable; as a human weapon basically raised as a vehicle of vengeance by her father Damon Macready / “Big Daddy” (Nicholas Cage), and has more moves than Bruce Lee and more sass than a Drag Queen float at NY Pride.  It is this magnetism that makes Hit-Girl stand-out, and shock as we consider what she will be like when she grows up!  Look out Ripley!

Awards and Nominations

For her role as Hit-Girl, Moretz was certainly rewarded winning several minor Film Festival awards including Austin and Ohio. At the MTV Movie Awards (2010), she won the Best Breakout Star MTV Movie Award and was nominated for Best Fight. In addition, she won the 2010 PFCS Award for Best Breakout Performance and was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role as Hit-Girl.   She also scored a nomination from her fellow “kids” at the 2010 Teen Choice Awards for Breakout Female (2010).

 

Honorable Mention

Trinity (The Matrix) – Carrie-Anne Moss

The diva and love interest to Neo in the Matrix series, Moss portrayed a powerful woman essential to the rise of the Chosen One. Her bad-ass moves and independence actually decline over the course of the series as she becomes much more of a worshipper at Neo’s altar.  However, her moves in the first film alone (arguably the only good film of the three) warrant a special place on this list.

Leeloo (The Fifth Element) – Milla Jovovich

The list would be far from complete without a reference to the breakout star of The Fifth Element, a Bruce Willis vehicle that saw his vulnerable and unstoppable co-star Milla Jovovich as Leeloo.  She is ethereal and deadly in a crunch, but ultimately, as a character, there is too much destiny and dependence on Willis to launch her into the top of the list.  Memorable nevertheless, even more so as Jovovich is the only actress to register twice.

River (Serenity) – Summer Glau

Glau reprises her role as River Tam from the classic, if short-lived, Joss Whedon series, Firefly. Serenity is the film version of the series and River is as bad-ass as ever.  Here, perhaps, she is even more powerful than in the series, given a focused story-arc and a road to somewhere, fast.  Unfortunately, like Leeloo, this character is led by forces largely out of her control, namely the images and the programmed actions in her mind, therefore not exactly uplifting in the independence category of consideration. Although the film went nowhere at the Box Office, Serenity and River tam, have a special place in film history.

 

Resident Evil – Afterlife: “B” in this B-movie stands for Blood, Bombs and Boring.

Proof that some ideas should have quit while they were ahead, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson has proven once again that more is in fact, not more.  The fourth installment of the tired Resident Evil Franchise lives up completely to its name – Afterlife, in this case, refers to the hell in which this film places its unsuspecting audience. 

Premise: Alice is still trying to destroy the evil Umbrella Corporation, zombies are still everywhere, and most of the time twists are added in for no apparent reason and with little to no explanation.  Result: Like a table tennis match gone horribly wrong, audience’s emotions lob back and forth between boredom and exasperation with no end in sight.

The first segment of this film connects the audience to the final moments of the third film, Resident Evil: Extinction, where Alice (Milla Jovovich) has discovered the ability to clone herself and will use this advantage in her ultimate revenge against Umbrella.  However, three years had passed since the last film, and the quick, confusing action sequences that explode on screen are complete disappointments, squandering whatever exhilaration came with the last film’s finale.  Here, with no build up, the attack on the Umbrella’s Headquarters in Tokyo are completely isolated and may have been better added to the end of its predecessor.  Things are happening on screen that feel more like something to get through than be thrilled by.

The climax of these misspent scenes is sadly absurd, with villain Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) suddenly injecting Alice with a substance that removes her infection and therefore her powers.  This moment is painful as this never-before-mentioned twist blind-sides the audience, forcing excruciating eye rolls at a formulaic event that only serves to foreshadow how much Anderson will disrespect his audience as the film progresses. 

Alice escapes and finds herself a plane and flies to Arcadia, Alaska, in search of a new world free of the infection – a place her friends supposedly went to.  Of course, the only thing she finds is Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) who remembers nothing, including her own identity, after having been entranced by a spider-like device on her chest.  Alice then captures Claire and takes her away on a girl-pal journey down the Western seaboard, searching for other survivors.  Naturally, she finds survivors at the top of a penitentiary conveniently larger than any building on Earth and also dead heart of a major zombie-ridden metropolis ( the only thing surprising at this convenient cliché was that the zombies have not yet learned to fly.)

Inevitable bad-movie montage: Alice lands the plane on the roof of the massive penitentiary, meets motley crew of stranded non-zombies who tell her Arcadia is a ship not a town, meet also Claire’s brother Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), impatient zombies tunnel through sewers to get into the prison, giant monster zombie breaks down fence and endless streams of zombies invade, things blow up, people die, Alice shoots quarters out of a shotgun (the only vaguely fresh and interesting part of the film’s first half), survivors escape and find the ship.  Sadly, I may have made the film sound better in montage.

The boarding of the Arcadia brings our film’s plot-template back on track: like a horror-film version of a color-by-numbers, the ship is, of course, run not only by Umbrella but by Wesker himself who, naturally, did not die in the plane crash at the film’s onset – What possibly would they do if he had??  Wesker is, of course, also infected by the virus, can teleport, and has decided that the only way to control the virus is to eat Alice to get her “stronger” DNA.  To ensure the audience’s submission to this last absurdity, Alice even mentions this was a “good idea.”  Sigh.  Enter The Redfield siblings who fight Wesker while Alice fights infected Dobermans and we have completed numbers 1-8 of the Resident Evil Color-by-Number. 

Of course, for a fine finale and bow to an inevitable sequel, Wesker’s destruction is mooted by hundreds of Umbrella air ships ready to attack the Arcadia filled with soldiers and controlled by a woman who herself is controlled by those spider machines.  None of this is explained, of course.  We don’t need any explanation nor by that point do we much care.  The acting, plot, dialogue and anything else we typically value in film are just necessary evils to deliver the true purpose of the film: blood splatters and explosions.  Fortunately, these are still done extremely well.

Overall, this film is a clear miss for fans or frankly anyone interested in anything more than a series of tired fight scenes; even the zombies in this film appear more like wall paper than integral to the plot. While there are a few frightful moments, this fear is more akin to realizing that your favorite jeans have been shrunk in the wash; while potential wardrobe malfunctions naturally strike terror in the hearts of all mankind, it is not exactly what the audience had in mind.

Rating: 3 – Mad Dog 20/20, Government Cheese, and a waste basket for afterwards