September 16, 2012



Contains spoilers.



All of the Resident Evil films are fun, from my understanding. I’ve only see bits and pieces of the first few films. But for someone who has limited knowledge about the films, Alice (Milla Jovovich) gives a brief rundown about what has happened in the past.



Retribution picks up where the last one left off. Alice and the group that escaped the Umbrella Corporation and its creations suddenly find themselves under attack again. After a helicopter crash on the ship she’s on, she finds herself captured by the Coporation. Just before waking up, we see Alice in an alternate universe where she is married with a deaf child. Soon, the happy family is attacked by zombies and Alice wakes up in a panic.



Alice is interrogated by her former ally-turned enemy controlled by the Corporation, Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), but she refuses to answer any questions. After a power outage, Alice escapes and finds herself in the streets of Tokyo. Confused, she arms herself and finds herself fighting off an army of zombies who follow her back into the Corporation’s hallways. She ends up in a control room, where all of the people are dead. That is when Ada Wong (Li Bingbing), an associate of Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), shows up. She informs Alice that she and Wesker no longer work for the Corporation. They are actually trying to help her escape so they can all save mankind from the Corporation and its leader, a computer, the Red Queen.



In order to escape, Wesker has put together a team that will extract Wong and Alice from the Corporation’s base, which is actually underground in the Artic Circle. Inside this base are a series of test environments, where the Corporation is making clones to test the T-virus on. We learn the dream sequence that Alice was in, was actually a test environment. So the team, which will enter through the outside, will meet the pair in the middle of the Russia test environment, which means each team will have to go through a series of battles in order to survive.



When Alice and Wong reach the Suburbia section, they find the little deaf girl from the earlier sequence. Alice takes her under her wing and promises to keep her safe. However, Valentine and her crew catch up to the pair and take Wong hostage, while Alice and the child escape. Meanwhile, the team from the outside is getting knocked off one by one in the Russian sequence. Alice saves the day and just before the reach the elevator shaft to the outside, Valentine reaches them. A few make it out of the battle and the blast to the outside, including Alice, the child and two from the team.



But as in every Resident Evil film, they of course, are not safe yet, as Valentine pops up from under the ice in a submarine with Wong and Rain Ocampo (Michelle Rodriguez), also a former ally that has been cloned and controlled by the Corporation. Ocampo takes the T-virus, which makes her invincible and a superfighter. And yet, after another battle, Alice ‘saves’ Valentine by destroying the device that controls her and defeats Ocampo. The crew is rescued by another team sent by Wesker. The group heads to the White House, which is now ground zero for the battle between the zombies and mankind. Wesker gives Alice her ‘powers’ back, in order for her to defeat the Corporation for good. She is, as he says, their only hope. The last shot is of the White House, surrounded by millions of zombies fighting to get in and take over.



This wasn’t a horrible film. When seeing a Resident Evil film, one must remember that it is based off of a video game, so they will all be structured exactly the same way. They are what they are and they are fun to see zombies and fight sequences. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea though.