If 'Resident Evil: Retribution' was meant to be an insanely elaborate walkthrough created for the latest version of the game, the effort, time and money spent creating this 'movie' (we deign to call it that) would seem worth it. The makers ensure that there's enough of skin and thrill value packed in, but woefully leave out imagination and a smart screenplay. 'Retribution', simply put, is Level Yawn unlocked, and we, for one, are desperate to pull the plug and declare this game over.

What's it about?
'Retribution' picks up where 'Afterlife' left off. Alice (Milla Jovovich), a former employee of the sinister Umbrella Corporation, appears to have escaped the Red Queen's forces and is now living a peaceful life in suburbia with a loving daughter and husband. Things go awry when zombies break into their home, kill her husband and chase down her and her daughter. The real Alice awakes to finds that she has been captured by the Red Queen's forces and that the suburban setting was simulated reality. She is, in fact, being tortured in an underwater base by an infected former ally Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) but escapes her clutches with the help of former Umbrella head Albert Wesker. A team is sent in to help her flee the facility but not before Alice has to travel through testing facilities modelled after mega cities like Moscow and Tokyo and teeming with the horrifying undead.

Director Paul WS Anderson, who's been responsible for bringing many video games to life on the silver screen, turns button masher with 'Retribution'. A flurry of fight sequences and  CGI creepy crawlies are let loose, but with no meaning to the madness. For example, if you're going to send a car flying in the air during a crossfire, at least let it hit something of consequence in the process. Also dragged to death is a gun battle between the rescue squad (who look like a band of rejects from auditions for 'The Expendables') and zombies in Moscow wearing fluffy hats. In fact, the exchange carries on for so long (three whole scenes), that Alice is finally forced to come in and deliver the audience from sheer frustration and the squad, to safety.

You'd think that it was about time Jovovich brought a little something more to Alice, but her performance is virtually indistinguishable from the last four times she's played the role. The makers, so starved of an original idea to even make a stunner like Jovovich look sexy, throw in a near-identical scene from the first movie, where she crawls around a white cell wearing nothing but two strips of paper covering essentials. Still, Jovovich proves that she is one of Hollywood's alpha action heroines and is, perhaps, the only reason anyone will see the latest installment. Michelle Rodriguez returns but is painful to watch, especially when she makes goo-goo eyes at new addition, Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb).

Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Retribution

What to do?
We'd have been kinder if this movie was curtains down for the series, but 'Retribution' ends with the frustrating promise of yet another installment. Save your money - this movie offers little you haven't seen before.

in.com rating: 1/5

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