Film Review – Resident Evil: Retribution

The last few weeks have been pretty slow for movies. It's that awkward in-between time of year where the summer blockbusters have ceased, but studios aren't quite ready to bring out the big guns for Oscar season. As a result, we've gone a few weeks without taking a look into the latest big ideas from the big screen.

This week we look at Resident Evil: Retribution, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich, who stars as Alice for the fifth installment in the series inspired by the popular video game franchise of the same name.

Plot

The film opens with a recap of the previous four films, a technique used to bring the viewer up to speed even if they haven't seen any of the other movies in the series.

To compact the four previous movies into one sentence: Alice looks to stop Umbrella, the company responsible for the zombie apocalypse brought on by the Umbrella-produced T-virus.

In Retribution, Alice looks to escape an underwater Umbrella-operated base in the Arctic Circle, and must battle her way out (with the help of some friends) to do so. Along the way she encounters Becky, a bio-engineered child from one of the base's artificial reality simulators. Alice escapes with Becky and the survivors of her crew before returning to Washington, setting up a sixth title in the series.

General Disclaimers and Technical Summaries

For obvious reasons, it's not recommended that you take your kids to see this movie.

Resident Evil: Retribution is bloody, action-packed mess of a zombie film, though it often has much less to do with zombies than it does with battling a corporation. Viewers can put aside any larger political statement about bureaucracy however, as Retribution never strikes the audience as having the mental capacity to speak on a higher intellectual level.

Fans of effects and soundtrack will revel in the synthesis of audio and visuals. Though the overuse of slow motion action sequences and 3D effects is definitely heavy-handed, it's hard to think of a movie in recent memory that blends music and visuals so tightly, one of the few bright spots from a filmmaking perspective.

Where Retribution utterly flops is in its delivery from the cast. Leading woman Milla Jovovich is forgettable, which is actually quite a compliment, considering the bad things that could be said about the cast around her, which includes Michelle Rodriquez as Rain Ocampo, Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine and Shawn Coates as Albert Wesker. It's hard to think of one line in the movie that isn't delivered in a tone other than deadpan, and the bare-bones story suffers as a result.

It's not that we expect a zombie-ish movie based on a video game to be groundbreaking in terms of story or character development. But the apparent lack of effort on the part of the cast makes the time between action sequences agonizingly slow.

Some considerations

Ultimately, it's hard to see Resident Evil: Retribution as a good movie, even if it is entertaining at times. But even from the bad we can occasionally find some important food for thought.

First, there are points to be made about Alice's decision to rescue Becky from the base. Though a product of bio-engineering like herself, Alice decides that Becky is worth saving, and is apparently willing to kill countless baddies to do so. It's never fully fleshed out why Alice feels that Becky, essentially an artificial human being, is worthy of a rescue mission, especially considering that she is not the only created human in the base.

What the film is perhaps (very clumsily) trying to say is that the single human life is worth saving. But in a gruesomely violent film, it strikes the viewer as odd, and rightly so. The core sentiment behind these actions is ultimately one of truth. But even so, we likely wouldn't have learned this from a Resident Evil movie, and it's not totally clear that we learn that from this movie, given Alice's willingness to slaughter dozens of former humans (zombies) to save one artificial human.

Retribution points to another interesting notion for Christian pondering. The cultural fascination with zombies and the concept of the undead seems to suggest that even secular society has some sort of yearning for life after death. The concept of resurrection is a theme that continues to play heavily in our culture; even for non-Christians, death does not seem to be a satisfying end to the story.

It's also interesting to note the tone in which the "resurrection" of the Resident Evil universe is presented. For some, resurrection is horrific, otherworldly, and ultimately unnatural. But for Christians, it's triumphant: it's our way of life. Everything we believe is tied to our view of the Resurrection of Christ.

Death is unsatisfying, oftentimes whether you're a Christian or not. If nothing else, Resident Evil: Retribution may be a conversation starter. It certainly isn't a cinematic masterpiece, but it's an interesting cultural snapshot. Perhaps the step forward from a movie like this is working to redefine the concept of resurrection, and to de-trivialize the concept of life after death.

Resident Evil: Retribution can be an entertaining movie, and has some obvious cultural implications, but it's not a must-see for Christian audiences looking to find sacred themes in a secular space. Death doesn't satisfy. Maybe it's time we as Christians welcome the rest of the world to the party.

Dear Readers:

ChristianWeek relies on your generous support. please take a minute and donate to help give voice to stories that inform, encourage and inspire.

Donations of $20 or more will receive a charitable receipt.
Thank you, from Christianweek.

About the author