I loved the first Resident Evil movie, disliked the 2nd one with its fast editing and confused storyline, enjoyed the 3rd again while the 4th movie was just OK. Unfortunately, I was totally bored with the 5th movie of the franchise. Maybe its a generational thing, but 90 minutes of watching people shoot and fight does not for me, a good film make. Agreed, visually the film is excellent and creates a great Sci-Fi environment but the plot and character development is so poor, even non-existent that I didn't care much what happened within that world. As well as this failing, there was no suspense or fear throughout the movie...the zombies just seemed to exist purely as cannon-fodder for Alice and her cohorts to show off their fighting skills. Personally, I didn't feel any connection with any of the characters (unlike the first movie) for me, they were all just too two dimensional and seemed to exist just to make up the numbers for the aforementioned incessant fight sequences. An example would be in the relationship between Alice and the little girl. Just because she hugs her and shows a maternal instinct doesn't necessarily mean that the audience will automatically be drawn in emotionally to their supposed relationship. It's not enough. More interaction is needed to develop their relationship and make the audience really care. This was true of all the characters in Resident Evil: Retribution and, if anything the movie needed to be slightly longer (or have less fights) in order to explore more of the human bonds between the characters. Otherwise we just feel as though we are watching a Video game with computerized characters.
With regards the 3D, it was a slight improvement on the 4th installment but there were few "wow" moments and the 3D is least successful in the type of fast paced fight sequence that is so prevalent in the movie. Overall, another disappointment in the franchise.
Buy at Amazon.co.uk
