I've been a fan of Capcom's Resident Evil games for a long time, since even before I owned a console on which I could play them. Their combination of zombies, monsters, and the "oh crap, something's gonna get me!" vibe made me fall in love with them as far back as the PS1 days in the middle of the '90s. So when I heard that there was going to be a Resident Evil movie, I got super-excited.
And then I actually saw it. I remember the date: March 16, 2002. I sat in that darkened theater watching something so unlike the games that I was dumbstruck. The Umbrella Corporation was there, the T-virus was there, the zombies were there, but it was far from the Resident Evil I knew and loved. It was, plain and simple, 101 minutes of stupidity.
But then came the sequels. Resident Evil: Apocalypse got a teensy bit closer to the games and was better for it, while Extinction said "screw it" and took the movie franchise as far away from the games as possible. All three were utterly mediocre movies that show what happens when a filmmaker wants to piss in the faces of a franchise's built-in audience by turning his significant other into an unstoppable superhero at the expense of everything that made the source material cool.
That leads us to Resident Evil: Afterlife, the fourth movie in the saga and the first to be made in 3D. Having given up all hope of seeing a live-action Resident Evil movie that's truly faithful to the source material, I went into Afterlife at least hoping that maybe it wouldn't be as silly as the first three movies or as goofy as its trailers and commercials made it look. Turns out all my hopes were in vain, as the movie is just more of the same.
The movie begins where Extinction left off, with Alice (Milla Jovovich) and her army of clones pursuing her vendetta against the Umbrella Corporation. The team of Alices storm Umbrella's underground bunker in Tokyo, a mission that ends with the clone army wiped out, Umbrella chairman Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts) seemingly dead, and Alice stripped of her superpowers.
With her enemies defeated, Alice ventures off to find Arcadia, a rumored safe haven for survivors located in the Alaskan wilderness. She arrives to find nothing but a field of abandoned planes and helicopters. The only other person to be found is Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), who has been stricken with amnesia and has no memory of where her convoy could have gone.
While flying down the western seaboard in search of other survivors, they discover a small group living in a maximum security prison in the ruins of Los Angeles. Among them are former pro basketball star Luther West (Boris Kodjoe) and Claire's brother, Chris (Wentworth Miller). When Alice and Claire mention Arcadia, the survivors reveal that it is not a town, but a cargo ship traveling along the coast. They've heard no radio broadcasts from Arcadia for several days, and it seems as if the zombies and monsters outside the prison will get to them before any help does. Left with little other recourse, this small band of survivors must find a way through the legion of undead that surrounds them and get to the safety they believe Arcadia has for them.
Resident Evil: Afterlife is a weird movie on multiple levels. It tries to do its own thing, yet it also tries shoehorning in elements from Resident Evil 5 without making them feel natural. And despite its 100-minute running time, it feels like only half a movie. There's really only enough plot to sustain it for somewhere around 30 to 45 minutes. The movie is just a compilation of action sequences that are barely connected to one another. It's a lazy movie that, for some strange reason, still manages to be somewhat watchable and even a little fun on occasion.
Paul W.S. Anderson returns to the franchise's director's chair after simply writing the other sequels, and he once again proves that he's more style than substance. The movie looks gorgeous, with some excellent cinematography and impressive special effects. And although there was no discernible need for the movie to be 3D, it still provides for a few very cool moments. (The scene where Alice and Claire fight that giant executioner guy from Resident Evil 5 in the prison shower is awesome, by the way.) Unfortunately, there's nothing much to it at all. Anderson's overuse of slow-motion and "bullet time" gets annoying after a while, too. There's so much slow-motion in the movie that I started to think that Anderson was just padding out the runtime.
It doesn't help anything that Anderson isn't a very good writer. There's no two ways about it. It's especially obvious with this particular script, which is so utterly bad that I'm surprised a movie studio signed off on it. There's practically no plot at all, and what little there is goes absolutely nowhere. Nothing is accomplished, nothing is gained or lost. It contributes nearly nothing to the Resident Evil movie franchise at all. And that pretty much sums up the entirety of Afterlife; it's a great big mountain of nothing. The characters are useless, the story is nonexistent, and the dialogue is banal. The movie is just plain there, with no point and no reason to exist. And that's terrible.
If I may single out some more specific complaints, one of the things that bugged me the most about the script was how quickly Anderson dumped the idea of an army of Alice clones. Yes, I've complained about how Alice had completely overwhelmed everything else in the movies, but a movie where dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of Alices go to war with Umbrella was something I could have gotten behind. That could have been a cool movie. But what happens? Anderson gives us a couple of clones and kills them all off in the first ten minutes of the movie. Couldn't we have gotten at least half an hour before they get eliminated? You never cease to disappoint me, Paul W.S. Anderson.
At least Anderson manages to get a cool musical score out of his composers, Thomas Hajdu and Andy Milburn. Collectively known as "tomandandy," Hajdu and Milburn provide a bass-heavy techno score that is far better than what the movie actually deserves. If there's one good thing about Resident Evil: Afterlife, it's tomandandy's music.
Rounding us out is the cast, who aren't great, but don't totally suck either. Milla Jovovich once again returns as Alice, a role that doesn't require Jovovich to do much acting. I mean, all she has to do is look like a sexy badass and hope that the stunts don't go awry. I'm still convinced that Anderson continues to give Jovovich such a huge part in the Resident Evil movies so she'll have steady work, but maybe she should try talking him into letting the role have a few more moments where she can actually do some acting, or just stopping the movies altogether so she can do some other movies for a change.
Moving on, I thought Ali Larter and Wentworth Miller were quite good as Claire and Chris Redfield, the sibling duo whose exploits have been such an important part of the games. Both Larter and Miller play their roles with a quiet, focused intensity that I thought made them that much cooler when they got to kick some ass. I still wish, though, that the movie franchise had focused more on the game characters than Alice. Maybe then Larter and Miller would have had more time to shine.
Among the others in the cast, I have to confess that I thought Boris Kodjoe did a fine job in his role. It's a thankless character that isn't written all that well, but Kodjoe did the best he could. The same can be said for Kim Coates, who plays one of the most entertainingly irritating horror movie characters I've seen in a while. Coates purposely plays the character in such a way that you'll hate his guts the second you see him and will be happy to see him get his comeuppance. He hits every note exactly right, and though he doesn't have a whole lot of screen time, Coates's portrayal of the clichéd prick of the group was aces.
Last but most certainly not least is Shawn Roberts as Albert Wesker. Wesker has been one of the most important elements of the Resident Evil franchise, serving as its "Big Bad" in one form or another since the very beginning. He's probably my favorite video game character of all time, and I thought Roberts did a fantastic job in the role. Roberts absolutely nails it, playing the character exactly how I'd always wanted to see a live-action version of Wesker done. Honestly, if the entire franchise had followed the leads of Roberts and Sienna Guillory's take on Jill Valentine from Apocalypse, the Resident Evil movies would have turned out a lot better.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the movie. Maybe when it hits DVD in a few months, I'll watch it again and have a different opinion of it. It happens. But as of this present moment in time, Resident Evil: Afterlife is disappointing. I knew exactly what to expect when I bought my ticket and put on those 3D glasses, but I still hoped for the best. And I'll continue to hope that someone will finally make a live-action Resident Evil movie that's actually good. I know it's possible. I'm sure of it. I'll be patient and bide my time, and I'll watch every movie bearing that name anticipating something great but knowing that I probably won't get it. At least the games haven't let me down yet. I still have them to remind me that the Resident Evil name can be attached to something awesome. Maybe one day, Hollywood will get it right.
Final Rating: **
No comments:
Post a Comment