Yes, the actress/activist/fashion designer/singer/mother/former Ukranian supermodel Milla Jovovich has been in more movies where she is the last best hope for mankind against normal and supra-normal (including extraterrestrial and supernatural) threats (see The Fifth Element) and capable of handling acrobatic feats with ease (The Three Musketeers [2011]). These skills are heavily in play in the movie series that placed her name on the minds of movie producers: the Resident Evil franchise.
In the review for the House of the Dead movie, I brought up Ms. Jovovich and her baby-daddy Paul W.S. Anderson--the man responsible for the movie translation about the CAPCOM survival horror videogame. I bring her up again because this review for Resident Evil: Retribution before you is also a plea to Ms. Jovovich:
PLEASE END THE RESIDENT EVIL FRANCHISE WITH THE NEXT INSTALLMENT, BECAUSE IT'S WORN OUT ITS WELCOME.
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| whileIstoptheinvadingarmy--POSE... |
The secondary heroes in this movie are veterans from the video game series: Barry Burton, Leon Kennedy and Ada Wong. You find out most of the world which we've seen in previous installments has been a lie on a grand scale, rendering many of the movie's off-the-wall ideas quite sensible. It's as if the world has turned upside down to accommodate the twists & turns of the Resident Evil franchise...almost as if this entire series was written out before the first or second film hit theaters. If that's the case, kudos to the writers for such an amazing effort. Unfortunately, there seems to be a few reused ideas in this movie from previous Milla Jovovich movies in the series that could be done away with in my opinion.
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| Time for a "naked break" from POSING... |
I'm a dude; I like the ladies and what they are capable of doing. It's a great thing to see an empowered woman do her thing. It was a great thing in The Fifth Element and the first Resident Evil movie to see Ms. Jovovich in a state of vulnerability, represented by different levels of injury, nudity, and confusion/disorientation, because it allowed her to transform her earlier states into a form of RAAAAAAAGE. She then pushes out of that cocoon as a "bullet with butterfly wings" and takes out what forms of oppression and evil that lay beyond the walls of her prison. It's as if every scene like that is supposed to be a rape victim getting her shit together and striking out at their attacker. These can be very powerful scenes to witness, like Uma Thurman's performance in Kill Bill: Vol. I, but when overused it dulls the meaning of the scene as it happens a SECOND time in the latest entry
Due to the number of times this happens in the Milla Jovovich catalog, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that her days of being wrapped in funky clothes are behind her and she'd like to be able to act without any identifying markers: no clothes, no items, no fancy makeup, just her and her acting ability. Nakedness comes in many forms, from full frontal to a nondescript set of clothes. The next idea trashes most of that guess.
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| afterIslayabunchazombies--POSE... |
While it can be assumed Ms. Jovovich has creative control over her wardrobe, she normally chooses clothes that could be considered comfortable, functional, or feasible. It can be assumed in the first movie in the series (back when we could only see Michelle Rodriguez as the tough Latina chick) that she was caught unawares when she was wearing the red dress outfit. Over the course of the storylines she's gone from comfortable warrior to bondage queen. This is not an overnight change: she didn't wear corsets until the fourth film and the latex costumes in the fourth and fifth movies seems to be the new norm. I guess they're trying to hide or incorporate the harnesses from the wire-fu shots, but c'mon. Her wardrobe has some unintended consequences of influencing and highlighting Ms. Jovovich's acting style.
3. POSING
Ms. Jovovich's supermodel background has lent itself to the fine woman we see today. The clothes she wore then probably were uncomfortable to wear, as they were designed for looks not comfort. I keep mentioning comfort because if I were fighting zombies, I wouldn't wear a costume that could limit my range of movement. As such, a fashion designer's runway collection and the PVC/platform boots costume from Retribution lead to many instances of posing--a stiff positioning of limbs for emotional evocation. But hold the phone: she does this in her other, more comfortable outfit (the one where she uses a sawed-off shotgun filled with coins) and in her state of vulnerability/nudity. In clothes, she stands legs apart and fires two guns while her waist is twisted slightly, making her look more powerful. Without clothes (or just wearing some form of hospital shift that shows side- or under-boob), she is folded in a fetal position and/or low to the ground. The implementation of these forms comes off as inorganic and they detract from the storytelling in this movie--what story there was to tell.
Enough about that, let's talk about the movie itself.
The movie tends to lean back into its video game roots, treating every challenge to be overcome as a level in a game. This has the tendency to pop up in lazy screenwriting. It did have its good moments, especially in subverting an age-old beef I have with the movie industry. That makes up for a lot, but not much.
I would really like to hear more about Ms. Jovovich's musical career ("Gentlemen Who Fell" is still on my iTunes) or any other movie she's done. If she has to make another movie about the Umbrella Corporation's crimes against humanity, then let it be the last Resident Evil movie in the series.
And the word the poster up top should replace the word "ultimate" with "pentultimate". It means "next to last", as in "you all need to end this movie series with the next film." Please.
CHOICE CUTS:
- The Black guy died last. LAST.
- A running romantic subplot between Alice and Luther West. Not only does she like her clothes black, she likes her men Black too...
- Barry Burton: true gangsta.
- Not nearly as disappointed when it turned out Umbrella made Red Army zombies instead of Nazi zombies.
- Michelle Rodriguez not a butch killer-type, but a Bohemian chick in tight jeans and heels. Damn, she looks good when she's not scowling.
- Ada Wong does not give a fuck, and I love her for that.
- Drift turning in a Bentley with neon lights and spinners. Never thought I'd see that in a zombie movie.
- Oded Fehr is in this movie. You'd never know it if you blinked.
MOVIE RATING: 4/10
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