Overall Rating
  Awesome: 15.38%
Worth A Look: 16.35%
Just Average: 9.62%
Pretty Crappy: 25%
Sucks: 33.65%
6 reviews, 68 user ratings
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| Resident Evil: Apocalypse |
by Josh Gryniewicz
"More Terrifying than 'House of the Dead'"
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Most video games have just enough narrative to keep the action (& the quarters) flowing and usually lift their plot, part and parcel, from genre successful films. Adapting this to film then leaves audiences with a copy of a copy – which as any Xerox tech will tell you – never reproduces well.“Mortal Kombat” was a supernatural infused “Kickboxer” without Van Damme. “Tomb Raider” was smutty pre-pubescent fantasy of a female Indiana Jones. “Resident Evil” was a Romero style nightmare and “House of the Dead” a nightmare Romero would have (if he knew he were responsible). But in each case these films prove your best sticking with the original.
“Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse” picks up right where the first film left off, with the nefarious Umbrella Corporation, leaders in biotech military weaponry, genetic mutations and zombie manufacturing, deciding to re-open the HIVE, the underground base where undead shenanigans occurred last time around. Not surprisingly this action releases the “T-virus” zombie inducing gas into unsuspecting Raccoon City.
Its central plot involves rescuing a little Newt look alike (from “Aliens”), the young daughter of an Umbrella scientist, in order to use her as a bargaining chip to get out of the city. The rest of the film involves the few surviving characters racing from set to set, exchanging inane dialogue and fighting creepy critters – you know, like a video game.
Those few remaining characters (character is a pretty strong word, as cardboard has more personality) may seem a bit familiar because you’ve seen them done before and done far better (remember copy from a copy). Milla Jovovich reprises the first film’s Alice (though rebuilt stronger, faster, sexier) trying to rock the Ripley ‘tude while decked in threads she must have got from Barter town (just beyond the thunderdome). Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) is pasted right from the video game, but shoots for a Lara Croft look (Is that a vinyl top? Is vinyl comfortable? Can you really pull off an effective spin kick in heels and a skirt? Is that really practical?) Without Jolie’s unruly charismatic confidence Guillory comes off as uncomfortably campy as she looks. Oded Fehr portrays the utterly unconvincing generic renegade soldier Olivera with stale lines like “Fuck orders”; Mike Epps is the generic funny black man and Sandrine Holt plays the generic reporter along for the ride.
The would – be plot also brings in a mutant, killing machine that mixes the chintziest elements of “Robocop” and Jason Voorhees, complete with a corporate goon as puppet master, solely for the purpose of a one-on-one brawl with Ms. L’Oreal – you know, like a video game.
The first time around Romero was rumored to be heading up the project, which offered a sense of hope, but he was bumped supposedly for not staying true to the game (when was the last time the same respect was afforded a book? Or a comic book for that matter?) This time around the thread of hope went to second fiddle Paul W.S. Anderson who had delivered an “Aliens” & “Day of the Dead” hybrid that worked as zombie action, but he bowed out of the directing seat this time around to go screw up another genre flick “Alien Vs Predator.” Here, first time director Alexander Witt drops the ball on the one element that actually makes a film like this work, action, by speeding the fight sequences so fast you can barely see what’s happening.
What really counts as a strike against the movie is that the first film struck in a pre-zombie renaissance, when fans were hungrier for reanimated rotting flesh on film than a newly risen corpse hankers for fresh meat. In the wake of an undead revival which has brought the far superior tribute “28 Days Later”, the “Dawn of the Dead” remake and a handful of flicks in cue: (the spoof comedy “Shaun of the Dead”, two back-to-back “Return of the Living Dead” sequels, another Romero remake “Day of the Dead” and another installment from the zombie master himself “Land of the Dead”) the flaws in “RE 2” are even more exaggerated.What is interesting about the film doesn’t really have anything to do with the movie itself, but more the political context that the film reflects. What I call the “Big Bad, Inc Effect” (the trend of making corporations the generic villain for the nineties and beyond; a residual carry over of patented sci-fi formula) not only is glaring in “RE2”, but it is made all the more so by how truly uninspiring the film is. In other words, if an utterly brain dead film like this taps into the awareness that there is something dire going on in the current power structure, then it must really be prevalent in the implicit aspects of collective consciousness. Add to this a preoccupation of post-apocalyptic fantasy (even the anti-consumer magazine “Ad Busters” has devoted a special feature to entertaining post collapse fiction) and a stock of generic “little bads” –Umbrella Corp guards looking all – too – similar – too – be – coincidence riot cops (made fashionably popular in cities across America by the ‘99 WTO protests) and you have a seriously subversive undercurrent coursing through even the most cheesy aspects of pop-culture.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=10710&reviewer=362
originally posted: 09/11/04 20:42:31
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USA
10-Sep-2004 (R)
DVD: 17-Jan-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
21-Oct-2004
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