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The Definitive "Resident Evil: Retribution" Review

I would like to start my review off by saying that I have been a huge fan of Redent Evil nce it first began,. With that being said I have played all the games and own all the movies. To get this out of the way, I LOVE the movies, I think it was best they went in a different direction than the actual game itself. I don’t want to watch a shot for shot redue of a video game -.-

Now, everyone really seemed to hate Afterlife, I for one thought it was the best in the series. Claire is my personal favorite character from the entire Redent Evil franchise, Alice is of course way up there ;) With the ending to Afterlife I was stoked for the next installment and was counting the days till Retribution came out!

Now on with the review, which will contain spoilers, be warned. To start off, I loved how this movie began. It was nice to see it starting directly in the action. However, I did not like the fact that K-Mart, Chris and Claire were just left out. Suddenly they are no where to be seen on this ship, (when the last thing we see of them is the trio standing at Alice’s de) they aren’t even mentioned -.- This was a cool use of the 3D however, also I can appreciate them wanting to jump into the next story. However I really wish they would have spent more time on the actual fight on the ship, give Alice and Jill their first fight, see Claire and the others in action for a short bit. It was set up to be this amazing fight that only last about 3 minutes =/

So after the screen goes dark you see Alice wake up (like in the other 4 movies) This was an interesting segment of the movie, while it wasn’t scary you did get to see some horror in the tuation. It was different to see Alice in a house setting fighting for her daughters life, it was also interesting to see Rain being a girly girl. This was a cool part to the movie, but not the reason I was wanting to see this so badly.

After that happens, Alice wakes up in an Alice proof room =p She is briefly tortured, the power is cut and someone lets her out. As she is making her way down the hallway Jill sends laser’s after her…I really didn’t care to see this in this film. It was in two installments already, I had enough of the chain-link lasers. So this ends up drawing her out into a model of Tokyo, finding this very familiar we get to relive the beginning of Afterlife all over again. Nothing to special, but hey. So then Alice is drawn out into another hallway and (with her chain and gun) kicks some zombie ass. Clearly this was starting out to be a great movie, I know ;) With a ton of kick ass choreography and stunts she is lead out to another room.

This is where Alice meets Ada Wong…its cool to see the two finally meet condering Ada was the inspiration behind Alice in the first place, but apparently Alice automatically knows who Ada is. How do you ask? I cant tell you that, I was hoping they would explain a little but no. So Wesker pops up on a TV, explains a little about why he is trying to help Alice and then the red queen decides to break up the party. While returning to the original was a very cool concept the red queen became annoying, every time she did something her ugly little hologram popped up on screen, it was overused to be honest.Now we find 5 more characters entering the story, Luther (from Afterlife) Leon (from the game) Barry (from the games) and two other guys. They were the assembled team led by Wesker (why Chris, Clair or K-Mart wasn’t there I have no friggin clue!) to help retrieve Alice. They make their way into the underwater facility and begin to fight to find Alice.We then find Ada and Alice going from section to section of mini model’s of cities from around the world. First starting with Times Square…while this started very cool, it turned into a rushed action sequence with Ada and Alice and 2 executioners…while this sounds very cool it seemed like they just wanted to out due the already amazing executioner scene in Afterlife (trust me they didn’t top it) we are then taken to the suburban area we watched being torn apart in the beginning. We then find out Rain, One and Carlos are being led by Jill to capture Alice…so let me just count it for you we have 8 characters to follow now. There is a short action sequence and then Alice leaves Ada and with the girl and the two make their way to another mini world. This time they are greeted by Rain’s good clone, the girly veron who protests against guns.Now we are back to the guys and they are fighting las plagas zombies who are wielding guns, hummers and chainsaws…now while this could have been a very cool section with a little suspense and cool action it was just an overly long shoot out. They are then greeted by a licker on steroids and Alice saves their ass. There is a car chase scene and then bam, we’re done with that. Now the load of them try and escape, the little girl is taken by the giant licker (I don’t get why he didn’t kill her like he did everyone else??) and Alice must go find her, there is another shoot out between Leon, Barry, Luther, Rain, Jill, Carlos, One, and other masked clones…Barry decides to sacrifice himself, so after running out of ammo he pulls out a MAG, kills two more and is forced to come out to save Ada. They shoot him a few times, he falls down and appears dead…nope wait he is alive and his gun is falling from the sky now and he pops back up to kill One…well we are officially down a character that I thought would have some meaning. (Referring to One)

Alice ends up finding the girl, discovering enough clones to restart the world, bombs go off, the place starts to flood and everyone dies except Alice, Luther, Leon and the girl…or so we thought. As the four of them try to get away out pops a submarine holding Jill and Rain with Ada as their hostage. They knock Ada out, Rain injects herself and becomes unkillable, and bam start fight scene.Most of the fight is focused on Jill and Alice, (this being their first and only fight I had high expectations) so they pull out some weapons (lame) and go at it…we have a crap load of slow motion and a few cuts to Rain fighting the guys, then Alice finally gets her ass kicked. Jill is then ordered by Red Queen (who pops up on screen again…for like the 20th time) to kill her. Just as Alice is about to die she rips off the device keeping Jill under Umbrella’s control…now why wasn’t this done earlier?? Its literally that mple…just pulled it off…

So Rain kills Luther, kicks Alice’s ass again and then is drowned by a bunch of swimming zombies.

We then jump to the US and Alice and the team enter the white house to find Wesker controlling a raging war…he stabs Alice with the T-Virus to give her back her powers and tells her she is the human race’s last hope. Bam movie is over…

Now I want to actually tell you what I thought!!

Like I stated earlier I was bouncing off the walls waiting for this movie, it started out proming…but once New York popped up I realized what I was in for. Bacally there wasn’t much story, you get the bacs and then youre thrust into action…non stop action. Not saying the other 4 had oscar worthy story lines but they had more story and dialogue than a few one liner’s. This movie should have attempted to push 2 hours instead of 1hr and 35mins…it would have given the time for more story to develop, fill some unanswered questions, mention some misng people, gave more meaning to the action. Instead we are left with the over flow of Afterlife, with only two of the same characters. Then they throw in a handful of returning characters and don’t allow us to see much of them bedes shooting a gun. Then the new characters, they were treated the same way. There was too much happening in this film for the short run time. We were never able to really get to know Leon or Ada (like we were with Carlos Jill Clair and Chris) and returning characters were no more than extra’s.All in all it felt like a hectic war movie, a crap load of shooting, some cool stunts and no story.

While the 3D was good it wasn’t the best, they didn’t really use it to its full potential.All in all I felt like this movie was rushed, just to get you to the next and final chapter of the story. Like I stated earlier it was the run over of Afterlife, with too much happening with too many people and not enough time to make it all work. So I will give this movie a 6 out of 10...not my favorite installment in the series =/ Lets just hope part 6 makes up for this!

http://youtu.be/fetL5JuKGv4
JohnCorley92 Saturday 9/15/2012 at 05:42 AM | 96414
I couldn't agree more! Afterlife was also my favourite instalment.

The movie started out proming, then the rest just felt like a load of filler that didn't carry the story along at all. What really killed the movie for me: (This isn't really a spoiler because we find this out early on, but eh...) The trailer gave us the impreson that Alice would be travelling around the world stopping umbrella and the outbreak, when really from the beginning we find that shes stuck in some testing facility that replicates those places. I felt robbed.
A.Silent.Hill Sunday 9/16/2012 at 03:45 PM | 96471
I couldn't agree more! Afterlife was also my favourite instalment.

The movie started out proming, then the rest just felt like a load of filler that didn't carry the story along at all. What really killed the movie for me: (This isn't really a spoiler because we find this out early on, but eh...) The trailer gave us the impreson that Alice would be travelling around the world stopping umbrella and the outbreak, when really from the beginning we find that shes stuck in some testing facility that replicates those places. I felt robbed.

This is also what i thought, she would be out in about, but this movie was just a crap load of shooting...i dunno i had such HIGH hopes for this!! I do hope in the 6th installment they bring back Claire Chris and K-Mart!! I think that with all of them together it would be badass...i also hope they push the movie closer to 2 hours so we can spend a little more on the story with ALL the characters much like they should have with this one...i also dont know how i feel about them teaming up with Wesker...i mean who are they going to be fighting now?? Sure monsters, zombies and the Red Queen but who is going to be actually fighting ya know?? Like i stated in my review i really wish there would have been longer time on the ship...and i think that Alice and Jill should have fought more...it was one fight that wasnt even that good...plus they used weapons..i HATED that -.- I just hope Paul Anderson really delivers with part 6
JohnCorley92 Sunday 9/16/2012 at 03:59 PM | 96473