Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
9/25/10
Few
popular film franchises have divided their target audience more ferociously
than the films based upon Capcom's Resident Evil video game franchise.
The movies clearly have their fans, as the franchise keeps chugging along,
but hard-core gamers have made them and filmmaker Paul W.S. Anderson a
favorite target of online abuse. I've never played the games and
only joined the franchise with the last installment, Resident
Evil: Extinction, so I approach Resident Evil: Afterlife
with less of an investment than most potential viewers. While I enjoyed
Extinction, Afterlife is a real step forward, almost entirely
shrugging off the trappings of the Zombie Movie and embracing the eternal
struggle between Milla Jovovich's Alice and The Umbrella Corporation, a
deliriously outsized Evil Corporation that delights me to no end.
While Anderson's return to the director's chair (after just writing the
last two installments) is short on sense, it's long on entertainment thanks
to a wonderfully game cast buoyed by the addition of Prison Break
star Wentworth Miller. It's only fair to have a TV star onhand, because
Resident Evil: Afterlife plays very much like the 2-hour season
finale of a show the rest of whose season I missed. I didn't always
know what was going on, but it was undeniably cool.
To
recap: the Umbrella Corporation developed the T-Virus, which escaped
from their facility in Raccoon City and turned virtually every living human
into an unliving human, aka the walking dead. Alice (Milla Jovovich),
the one human on whom the Virus had its intended effect of amplifying strength,
speed and healing powers, travels the world in search of survivors and,
after the events of the previous film, believes she'll find a colony of
them in an Alaskan city called Arcadia. She follows a relentlessly
broadcasting beacon to its source, but finds only a field of abandoned
airplanes and her friend Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), rendered a violent
amnesiac by an Umbrella Corporation device attached to her chest.
As Claire's memories slowly return, Alice flies them both South to Los
Angeles, where they find survivors on the roof of an old prison hoping
for rescue. They are a cross-section of LA types: movie producer
Bennett (Kim Coates), star athlete Luther (Boris Kodjoe) and, locked in
a high-tech cage in the basement, a mystery man insisting he knows a way
out. He recognizes Claire: it's her brother Charlie (Wentworth
Miller), separated from his unit during the military response to the zombie
outbreak. The group at the prison has heard the same repeating broadcast,
only it didn't come from Alaska: their Arcadia is a massive aircraft
carrier off the California coast. If they can make it past a giant
with an ax, a city full of the undead and, once again, Umbrella honcho
Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), they just might be saved. That is,
if this Arcadia is any more legitimate than the last one.
I've
made it three paragraphs into this review without mentioning that Resident
Evil: Afterlife is in 3D, which is a lapse on my part because
it restores a lot of the luster lost to the format during a year of cheesy
conversions by studios looking to make a quick buck. Anderson shot
using James Cameron's Avatar camera systems (making
it the first genuinely 3D-shot live action release of the year), and Afterlife
is a great reminder that 3D really did seem awesome before Clash
of the Titans came along. Bullets wiz and axes fly right by your
head, water actually looks wet, and hordes of hungry zombies seem to have
some pretty serious dermatological issues. Seeing Afterlife
in 3D is actually worth the couple extra bucks.
And
even without 3D Bullet Time, the movie is a lot of fun because it recognizes
and plays to the strengths of the movie franchise: Alice and Umbrella.
This is Jovovich's Hamlet: her combination of stylish ass-kicking,
Spaghetti Western stoicism, community-building vulnerability and apocalyptic
guilt makes this a rich role for an actress who's willing to go all-in,
and she shows no signs of sequel fatigue. The Yang to her Yin, the
Umbrella Corporation, has never been more timely with their enthusiasm
for running the world into the ground while concerned only with their own
bottom line (in this case, the chance to dominate a world in ruins).
Wesker (Shawn Roberts takes over for Jason O'Mara without missing a beat)
comes out of the bunker with a vengeance, sporting some serious superpowers
and a total disregard for everything from human life to puppies (dig those
mutant dogs: ulp!). And like any good corporation, every time
you assume Umbrella's out of the game, they've got more resources up their
collective sleeves: make sure you stay for the end credits.
The
supporting cast is game and zippy as well: guest victims like the
odious Coates and heroic Kodjoe as well as actress Crystal (Kacey Barnfield)
and personal assistant Kim (Norman Yeung) make good impressions, while
Larter is once again a rock-solid Woman of Action sidekick. But perhaps
the movie's biggest revelation is giving Miller his first major action
movie role, and he looks every bit the star. Chris starts out vaguely
sinister, then gets on board with Team Alice, but throughout he radiates
cool. Having him on board going forward only increases my enthusiasm
for future Evil installments.
As
I mentioned, Anderson takes a lot of beating from critics and fanboys despite
a resume packed with mid-level entertainment like the good Alien vs.
Predator movie and the exceptionally scary Event Horizon (Death
Race sucked, on that I and his detractors can agree). Here he
again shows a good sense of cool behind the camera without a lot of sense
of, well, sense behind the keyboard. This is the kind of movie where
you can get in a plane in Alaska, randomly fly South and end up making
an emergency landing on the roof of a building where your long-lost brother
is locked in the basement. It's the kind of movie where a 10-foot
giant with an ax comes walking down a zombie-filled street, busts into
a prison and attacks the stars without explanation. And, my personal
favorite, it's the kind of movie where you can throw a character into a
cryo-tube that slowly lowers into the floor with them pounding on the glass
for escape, then call their name up on the cryo-system's computer and find
a thumbnail photo in their current clothes looking slightly frazzled as
though someone yelled “Smile!” and they turned to the camera a moment before
being frozen solid. Because the movie has so much spring in its step,
I preferred to laugh with its absurdities, but I couldn't blame you for
choosing to view them in a harsher light.
Resident
Evil: Afterlife ends pretty much exactly like a TV cliffhanger,
and it's a doozy. And given the way the opening plays fair in following
up on/disposing of threads from Extinction, I expect to actually
see its events hashed out in whatever sort of generically grave word is
selected to title the next installment. I wouldn't have it any other
way. With the addition of fun new cast members and a real commitment
to 3D, this is a franchise on the upswing, even after four movies.
Of course, I've never played a Resident Evil game, and, oddly enough,
that seems to make me its ideal viewer. |
