Big Screen Peter: Resident Evil: Retribution

There are two important things to remember about Resident Evil: Retribution.

It'd be quicker to list its positive attributes than the negative.
The entire franchise — that's four films for those counting at home — is summarized in roughly two minutes.

If that isn't a deterrent, then it must be presumed that you are either bored or somehow related to the filmmakers. In either case, here are the items to be cognizant of before venturing to the multiplex.

Milla Jovovich has a frustrating stint of jail-time. Were it not for the irritating method of torture — the most annoying sound in the world on steroids — imposed while in there, viewers would have a chance to marvel at her semi-nude figure for a few minutes. A scene that, it should be noted, is sartorially similar to her iconic portraiture in The Fifth Element and almost the same length as the aforementioned franchise recap.

Allow me to elaborate: More time is spent portraying Milla Jovovich's partially nude figure as she screams at her former BFF Julie for subjecting her (and us) to the most grating noise in the world than the entire franchise recap. Because a decade of (cinematic) background history is less important than seeing a piece of notebook cover Jovovich. Because narrative is less important than your bleeding ears.

Compared to that sequence, the rest of the movie was a dream. Which could have possibly been Paul W.S. Anderson's intent. Can't you see the thought bubble forming up over his head? “Yeah, maybe if they have red liquid flowing out of their ears, they won't notice that my story makes no sense, that my actors are horrible, and that my super-pretentious directorial name is in no way warranted.”

The story structure is so dumb that I've spent a few hundred words on this “review” and haven't even mentioned it. Which, for those that have read previous columns, is pretty astounding (I don't think I've ever made it beyond 50 words of any previous review without using the phrase “plot structure” at least once).

In this case, the movie's plot structure (there it is!) is fittingly and irritatingly set-up exactly like a video game: beat a “boss,” make a corny joke and pretend everything is hunky-dory before all hell breaks loose once more. One would think that sort of rinse & repeat cycle would engender a little bit more vigilance among the good guys after an iteration or two. One would also think an etch-a-sketch script wouldn't be turned into a major motion picture. I digress.

Alice is our heroine. And she's again trying to take down the Umbrella Corporation and save humanity from its evil experiments & scourge of undead. This time she's again fighting the Red Queen — stop me if you start noticing the distorted parallels with Alice in Wonderland — a computer whose voice is that of a petulant British child and whose demonic avatar seems plucked straight from Mr. Lewis Carroll himself.

The twist, because there's always a twist, is that Alice is forced to cooperate with her longtime nemesis Albert Wesker, the former head of the Umbrella Corporation that she seemed to kill at the close of Resident Evil: Afterlife.

Maybe I should just wrap it up here.

Let that convoluted inanity sink in a bit & segue into a rant about the dispiriting irony of the movie: the franchise, like the virus it portrays, seems to be multiplying to no end.

Hollywood, it seems, it still searching for its own hero to rid the infection of mediocrity currently nested within the industry.