RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION is a good reason why you shouldn't take my movie recommendations.

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION should have been called G.I. JOE vs. ZOMBIES.  That is what this whole movie looks like.  The movie has nothing to do with retribution but it does have a bunch of guys that look like action figures running around getting killed by the weapons proficient undead.  I am not sure why the word "retribution" is in the title.  R.E.R. is about Alice once again in an Umbrella facility that is underwater running from monsters, zombies and clones.  There is no revenge involved with any of that.  She is just getting from point A to point B with the help of some familiar faces.  Barry from the original RESIDENT EVIL game (Played by that one guy that gets stabbed repeatedly in the throat in 3:10 TO YUMA) and Leon (Played by......Dolph Lundgren?) from the game's sequel are mercs or something who are sent by Wesker to help Alice escape.  Now I am just going to say it.  I like all of these movies.  I think they are fun monster movies that can't be taken too seriously.  I happen to like monster movies a lot.  I also happen to like bashing things I like too so here I go.

R.E.R. is more like a live action cartoon with outlandish fighting moves, extremely elaborate super complex impossibly located Umbrella bases and bad bad writing.  Most of the time with movies like this I usually don't mind a little bad dialogue.  As long as the movie is entertaining and creative I don't care.  But DANG(!) this movie has this really bad scene where Wesker (Looking quite good for being blown up by a mini-nuke) appears on this computer screen and starts explaining to Alice that the neighborhood she just escaped from was just a simulated street used to demonstrate to buyers what the zombie virus can do.  Confused for some reason Alice starts questioning about the weather and people and such and Wesker obliges with answers.  No way after four past movies dealing with the Umbrella Corporation and their uber-high tech underground bases would Alice question the validity of a simulated environment.  All Wesker should have said was,"It was simulated".  And Alice should have responded, "That's what I figured".  The end.  But, No.  We get a five minute scene that feels like ten minutes of a back and forth question and answer session that adds nothing to the scene.  We are told nothing that everybody including all the characters don't already know.  Are you padding your run time, RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION?  Seriously.  Babies write better dialogue in their diapers.

The movie has this weird vibe to it like they are struggling to fill up the movie with stuff we haven't seen before.  They throw in game related moments to gain street cred with the nerdos like this guy getting chainsawed in the chest.  That was kind of cool.  That happened in RESIDENT EVIL 4 the game I think.  But really we have seen all this stuff before.  There are too many moments and too many lines that seem to be lifted from better movies that came before.  At one point this giant Licker shows up and steals this girl that Alice has been protecting.  The ugly thing has done nothing but kill everybody it has seen the whole entire movie but for no reason what so ever it keeps the girl alive and cocoons her.  Now Alice has to save her.  Yea, the movie turns into ALIENS.

I also wished Alice wouldn't feel the need to explain to all of us that her name is Alice and that she used to work for the Umbrella blah-blah-blah.  We really don't need to hear that tripe over and over again. 

The rest of the movie is good though.  It was fun watching mercs battle Russian soldier zombies for thirty minutes that shoot guns, operate chainsaws and drive trucks and motorcycles.  And I really liked the use of clones in this movie too.  It was weird in a good way having clone guards of people from Alice's past hunt her down.  Michele Rodrigueze plays a good clone who dies and a bad clone......that dies too.  And there are a couple of other clones from the first and second movie who are after Alice as well.  They really don't do much with this concept of familiar faces being different characters.  They could have done so much more if the story wasn't so impaired with the overly used plot of escaping from point A to point B.  Still it was cool to see.

How stupid was I to think that this was the last RESIDENT EVIL film?  They end the movie with this LORD OF THE RINGS battle at Helms Deep ending where Alice is on top of the White House with hundreds of Army guys fending off billions of zombies.  It was a cool ending but you know that when they make part 6 they will forget about all of that and put Alice on a space ship in space or on another freakin planet and pretend the ending of part 5 never happened.  They do that in almost all of these movies.  I was a little frustrated that they spent no time explaining what happened to everybody else from part 4.  If I remember correctly Claire Redfield and whoever else was still alive back on some ship.  They make no mention of them but still put them (at least Claire) in the end credits.  I guess they do bring a couple of them back like the evil robot spider possessed Jill Valentine and that one guy they left behind back in prison.  But Claire was kind of important, right?

RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION is more of the same with nothing new to the mix.  If you love the film series then you should have no trouble finding room on your DVD shelf for this one when it comes out.  I know they didn't put much thought into this movie.  Just look at the title.  They found a not so overly used "R" word that sounds cool and named the movie that.  When I think about R.E.R. there are more negatives than there are positives.  There really isn't a whole lot that makes sense in any of these.  But I can't help it.  I love zombies movies, I love monster movies, and I love chicks with guns.  The RESIDENT EVIL films combine all the things I love and gives them a polished updated look.  With that said they really need to end the whole franchise with part 6.  Enough is enough already. 

Jason