Resident Evil: Retribution

Movie Name: Resident Evil: Retribution
Year of Release: 2012

Director: Paul W. S. Anderson

Stars: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez, Aryanna Engineer, Bingbing Li, Boris Kodjoe, Johann Urb, Kevin Durand, Oded Fehr, Colin Salmon, Shawn Roberts

Genre: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi

Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 3

Synopsis:

The "Resident Evil" franchise continues, under the helm of the original creator of the series, prolific director Paul W.S. Anderson. The film picks right after the previous one, where Alice is again being hunted by the Umbrella Corporation. Alice finds herself in an underwater testing ground, where Umbrella develops biological weapons. Her former nemesis, Albert Wesker, is now trying to save her in order to get her help fighting the artificial computer who is running the entire Umbrella corporation and is intent on destroying the entire human race. It's up to Alice and her allies, to escape the desolated and dangerous ground and battle the corporate menace.
Paul W.S. Anderson is a director who primarily focuses on spectacle and big action sequences. Character development is usually secondary, and the "Resident Evil" has been a good example of it. The series is at this point starting to exhibit a bit of the same tiresome plot points, with some back and forth on story line elements that have been explored previously. To balance the weaker plot issues, the visuals are getting increasingly more sophisticated and so is the budget for the films. "Resident Evil: Retribution" tries to emulate a bit of James Cameron's "Aliens", by giving Alice/Milla Jovovich a maternal anchor, but that is sadly, threadbare and hardly developed. What ends up on screen are some good visual effects and some nicely choreographed action scenes, that don't make up for a film, but occupy some time.