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 | (Reviewed by DOMD) - ***Spoilers*** Maybe I entered the theatre with
low expectations, as I wasn't exactly a fan of the first film, but a great
fan of the games. There were only a handful of things about the first
film I found likable, but the bad outweighed the good tremendously. In
spite of this, I found myself pleasantly surprised this time around, and
this time around I can comfortably call this a "Resident Evil"
movie. The film is written by the first film's Paul "Everything I
touch turns to shit" Anderson, but RE2 already has something going for
it: Paul's not directing! The film kinda starts out where the last
film left off, but filling in some blanks as the Tvirus slowly spreads.
Umbrella quarantines Raccoon City, eventually shuts off all exits and
considers everyone left inside expendable. Good platform to lead off
from. We get several characters in addition to Alice, who now has the
superpower of zombie-ass-whopp'n, and it becomes a plot to get the hell out
of the city without getting killed by either zombies or soldiers.
Great premise. Can they make it out alive? By "they,"
I mean the audience.
The biggest issue I had with the first film was the total lack of respect
towards its original source. The games, with B-movie trimmings and
all, had imagination, fun characters, and suspense. The movie,
however, didn’t. That’s not the case here. New RE director,
Alexander Witt seems to have actually played the RE games, and thus was able
to weave them into Anderson’s story, giving a real visual point of
reference. We have streets littered with abandoned cars, most blazing
in riot fires, and the zombies roam in ravaging herds. It brings back
the fond memories of the setting in John Carpenter’s “Escape From New
York,” except for the zombie part. Often times, it’s too dark to
really see the zombies. Most shots of them are fast, and even shaky.
I know they were going for dramatics or spookiness, but I was wondering if
they really did it to hide flaws in the make up. I could be wrong, but
it was what I was wondering. The establishment shots of various
buildings, including the church and the junior high school, are done in
brilliant gothic fashion. Witt really seemed to nail the mood of the
original videogame, Resident Evil 2.
Let’s talk about the monsters. I enjoyed how the hellhounds were put
to better use in this film, whereas the first they were on screen for what?
20 seconds? Here, they are stronger, more vicious, and we get to see
the damage they can do. The lickers are just like the rat bastards
they are in the games-sneaky, wall crawling motherf*ckers. They all
get killed off too soon (or there’s too little of them in the film) but
the moment of them is enough for now. I hope for more of them in a
sequel. The zombies were much more spaced out, physically, unlike the
first film which just resembled a sweaty mosh-pit. It’s nice to see
the slow moving, “Romero-esque” zombies starting to get back on screen.
Now we just need the buckets of gore…which by the way, this film greatly
lacked. Then, we enter B-movieville, Project: Nemesis. He’s
not necessarily a bad addition. He does look cool, kinda reminding me
of Kane Hodder’s Jason in “Friday the 13th: The New Blood,” crossed
with one of Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” characters. But even
with this cool, comic-esque designing, I couldn’t help but giggle to
myself. It was a frigg’n monster with a bazooka and a gattling gun!
How serious do we take this? Not much from where I was sitting, but I
don’t think we were suppose to. He was fun to watch. What?
That was it? I think not. There’s another creature, or sub
creature we see that I don’t agree fits with the other categories.
It’s the graveyard zombies. Zombies that actually come up from the
ground (and look like they’ve been there for a LONG time). It was a
total surprise to me. Why do you ask? Because while the
characters were walking through the graveyard, I was thinking, “it would
be so cool if zombies climbed out from the ground, but Anderson wrote this
so it won’t happen.” Then what happens? They climb out and
start herding. I then caught myself thinking, “wow, maybe Anderson
can write some decent concepts…he just blows it by directing them.”
Now onto the characters. The character known as LJ is far and away the
best character here. He’s the only one with a personality, and I
just loved him. He’s a black man who thinks he’s mac-daddy cool,
has a funny wussy side, and gets to deliver all the best lines…and he does
it seamlessly. Unfortunately, LJ is the only character in RE2 we get
to give a damn about. We have the shallowness that is Alice (reprised
by pretty-but-not-much-else Mila Jovavich.) She now has genetic
alterations from the T-virus that may as well just be invincible. She
seems to have no weakness, no flaws, and thus we can’t really be
compassionate if she’s going to make it through. There’s no
kryptonite for her. She gets to kick too much ass, and no one really
gets to kick hers, not even Nemesis. Sure, she gets to do some cool
stunts…but how about some vulnerability? We get a handful of
S.T.A.R.S members, all of which may as well be named Chris Redfield, even
the black guy. There is one member of S.T.A.R.S. who seems to have
some charm, Nicolai (played by underdog comic actor, Zack Ward), but he gets
wasted once he really begins to open his mouth. Took me a while to
recognize, but Oded Fehr (of “The Mummy” and “Deuce Bigelow” fame)
is in this with short conservative hair. He’s nowhere near as good
as he was in “The Mummy.” Heck, he was better in “Deuce
Bigelow.” We get a couple stock-evil-corporation guys as the real
baddies and several other no-name-don’t-care characters. Then we get
some familiarity on board with video game character, Jill Valentine, of the
original Resident Evil game. Sienna Guillory, who plays her, has no
real sense of the word acting. She’s pretty much here to pose for us
in a rather skimpy-for-a-special-forces-kinda-gal outfit. Her
introduction into the film where she is inside the police station is far too
cartoonish for me. And boy, does she do some posing. Sienna is
the most beautiful horror vixen I’ve seen since Macarena Gomez in Stuart
Gordon’s “Dagon.” Gorgeous. Maybe if she learns to act,
she can play Catwoman…and I mean the real version.
One of the things I go to movie for is to be told a good story, and it is in
the hands of the editors to deliver the good story in the best way to tell
it. When an editor is hopped up on caffeine and uses a weed whacker to
edit a film, we’re going to have some narrative problems. There are
many moments in the film where there are far too many edits that have no
story telling rhythm, or groove, where it’s hard to tell what’s going
on. It’s primarily like this in the action sequences, and while my
head can fill in most of the blanks, there are just some shots that become
blurs. Speaking of blurs, there are several trick editing done on some
shots of zombies, where it appears that they are walking slowly, but it
looks like a blurry stop motion cartoon. It works in Tool music
videos, but at least it does so with the music. Here, it’s stylishly
pointless and annoying.
Speaking of pointless, there is a staged, for lack of a better term,
“unarmed” fight scene between Nemesis and Alice. Why? The
Umbrella man tells them to, seemingly against their will? What is
this? Gladiator? Sure, I’d have liked to see Alice and Nemesis
go on an all out brawl using anything and everything to bring each other
down, but only on their own terms and if there are lots of destruction.
An unplanned face-off that’s more of a face-off than the time-wasting
Umbrella entertainment we get. Instead, we get to see a brief, quick
edited, fist fight between the two, that didn’t seem to be appropriate for
the movie, at least at this point. However, Nemesis seemingly getting
a conscience (the essence of “Matt” from the first film growing) and
turning against Umbrella and assists Alice is good. I’ve always
loved that man-made monster learning right and wrong theme, like in
“Frankenstein,” and I get that here in “Resident Evil: Apocalypse.”
“Resident Evil: Apocalypse” is an action horror flick with much action
and a much-to-be-desired horror. The film is never scary, but uses
horror elements as target practice, which isn’t a bad thing. Some
action scenes range from over the top (running down the side of the
building) to just plain silly (crashing through the church window on a
motorcycle?), but hey…remember the action in the first film? This is
a vast improvement. We also get improved music, instead of the droning
Marylyn Manson noise of the first film. Characters are all uninvolving,
aside from LJ anyway, yet this film resembles the ideal of a real Resident
Evil movie, not the lame sci-fi wanna-be with the title tacked on.
Point is, this time if you enjoyed the RE games, you can enjoy this film.
It’s got some undotted i’s and some uncrossed t’s, with a few dings
and scratches, but it’s a huge step in the right
direction…far…far…away from Paul “Everything I Touch Turns To
Shit” Anderson’s first film. If the next RE film was as much
better than RE2, as RE2 was to RE1, then RE3 is most likely a diamond in the
rough. But that’s just hopeful thinking.
Grade: B- |
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