RESIDENT EVIL:
EXTINCTION
 
STARRING: Milla Jovovich, Oded
Fehr, Mike Epps, Ali Larter, Chris Egan, Ashanti, Iain Glen, Sienna Guillory,
Jason O'Mara
2007, 94 Minutes, Directed by:
Russell Mulcahy
 Description:
The third installment of the $100 million
Resident Evil hits, Resident Evil: Extinction is again based on the wildly
popular video game series and picks up where the last film left off. Alice (Milla
Jovovich), now in hiding in the Nevada desert, once again joins forces with
Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps), along with new survivors Claire
(Ali Larter), K-Mart (Spencer Locke ) and Nurse Betty (Ashanti) to try to
eliminate the deadly virus that threatens to make every human being undead...and
to seek justice. Since being captured by the Umbrella Corporation, Alice has
been subjected to biogenic experimentation and becomes genetically altered, with
super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. These skills, and more, will be
needed if anyone is to remain alive. —
Amazon.com
It’s The Road Warrior meets
Night of the Living Dead in Resident Evil:
Extinction. This sequel kicks off where the previous movie left off with
almost the entire planet having been infected with a zombie virus. Our heroine
Alice (Milla Jovovich of Fifth Element and
Ultraviolet fame) has been imbued with super
strength and agility thanks to some genetic tampering; not to mention
telekinesis and the ability to create invisible force fields just like Jessica
Alba did in the Fantastic Four movies. (In one
scene she levitates several rocks as well as a BMW off-road motorbike pretty
much in the same way that Luke Skywalker did in that one scene with Yoda in
Empire Strikes Back). Handy skills for a
post-apocalyptic scenario that involves the dead walking the earth again . . .
except she manages to trash the motorbike and has to hoof it the rest of the
way.
|
"Will zombies need superfluous sequels?" |
In the meantime, back at the
Umbrella Corporation’s labyrinthine underground facility, an evil scientist from
the previous movie is hatching a plan not to cure all the human flesh-eating
zombies now prowling the face of the earth, but to “domesticate” them. That is,
turn them into slave labor for the malevolent Umbrella Corporation, which
inadvertently released the virus that turned the planet into a zombie holocaust
in the first place. This is a neat little comment on corporate avarice from a
huge multinational (Sony) that is greedily wringing all the money it can from a
movie franchise based on a computer game! However our corporate drones have a
poor grasp of basic economics. With most of the planet’s population turned into
brainless zombie laborers, who is left to buy the products made by said zombie
work force? Capitalism works best when laborers actually buy the products they
produce —
or will zombies need tooth paste? Playstation games? Superfluous sequels?
Back in Nevada Alice comes
across a convoy of surprisingly not-so haggard survivors that seems to have
drifted in from
The Road Warrior. For some reason all the women still wear makeup and
dresses the way they no doubt saw Linda Hamilton do in
Terminator 2 – Judgment Day. She helps them battle some zombie killer crows
(yup, you read that right) in a scene which you can’t decide whether it is a
rip-off of or a homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds. We’ll go with rip-off
here. Afterwards they decide to pick up some supplies in Las Vegas, which is
somehow partially submerged beneath the desert sand, but hey, this sort of thing
is bound to happen when you let zombies run the planet . . .
 If
you’re waiting for a plot to kick in somewhere in-between this synopsis, then
you are not the only one. The Resident Evil movies
have never been great cinema but at least they were pretty focused, stripping
away niceties such as character exposition and development in favor of action.
Extinction also pretty much leaves its characters behind in the dust, but the
plot meanders around aimlessly for a huge chunk of the film’s 90 minutes plus
running time in the same way as its lost Mad Max-like
protagonists scour the landscape. At several points a plot seems to be kicking
in (our heroes are off to Alaska like the Simpsons in their recent movie!) but
this is not to be alas.
Another problem is that some
exposition or flashbacks would have been in order just to get the audience in on
the picture again. You’ll however be scratching your head for quite a while
trying to figure out plot specifics: how is the zombie virus spread for
instance? Is it airborne? Or only if you’re bitten by an infected person? How
can an Umbrella Corporation satellite shut down Alice? Is she an android now?
And so on.
Fans of the previous movies
probably won’t be disappointed even though this sequel feels downright
anti-climactic at times. Post-apocalyptic movie buffs will also thrill at the
sight of an oil tanker plowing through endless hordes of the living dead and get all
nostalgic about all those early-1980s Road Warrior rip-off flicks they no
doubt saw as kids. For the rest of us getting restless in our cinema seats:
we’ll be wishing that we saw Extinction for free on the Sci-Fi Channel late one
night instead of forking out a full-price theatre admission for it . . .
|
