Director: Paul Anderson
IMDB Link

I heard a long time ago that they were thinking of making a movie based on Capcom's popular Resident Evil series of video games. At the time, that was the last I heard about it, so I shrugged it off as just another bad Hollywood idea. So, flash forward a few years... I hear that Resident Evil the Movie opened in theaters on Friday. It seems the trend lately is to take a popular video game and base a bad movie on it, so I wasn't expecting much walking in to the theater. In fact, as I was walking in, I overheard people leaving the previous showing talking about how much it sucked compared to some subtitled French flick I can't remember the name of. But since I had already paid my Matinee fees, I figured I'd sit through and kill an hour and a half with a bit of un-dead zombie ultra-violence.

Now let me just say that I've always been a big fan of the games. The eerie sounds, the startling moments, the cheesy as all hell in-game videos, and when I'd read that Milla Jovovich was in the lead role, all I could think was "Leeloo Dallas. Mull-tee-pass." But she's holds her own in the flick - Kicks some zombie ass and pulls it off nicely. Plus she ends up mostly naked at the beginning and end of the film. (She can snap my neck using her thighs anytime, I tell you what.)

Michelle Rodriguez was admirable as well, as the Umbrella agent most likely to kick you in the teeth to put out the fire on your face. But for some reason whenever she was on screen, i kept thinking of Angelina Jolie. Weird. The plot... Well, if you've played any of the games, you know that the story centers around the mysterious Umbrella Corporation, which has its dirty little fingers into everything... Including biochemical viral research. So they're experimenting, blah blah blah, things go bad, everyone dies. And that's just the first 10 minutes. In comes the special team to clean up the mess, then things get complicated.

Every other scene has the spooky rising music, trying to build you up and then scare you, and it gets kind of annoying after a while. I did see half the theater jumping though, so maybe I'm just a harsh critic. I also didn't like the fact that this movie (along with every other movie now it seems like) uses the same sort of "matrix-y" special effects and I mean, I enjoyed it the first time, but now it's just getting old.

The movies got a few good laughs, some good visual moments, (Although I was disappointed with the Tyrant-like evil mutant) and a really good ending. Sort of a prequel to the games if you like chronology and that sort of thing.

Anyhow, 'twas an entertaining waste of an hour and a half, but definitely a matinee flick... Unless you just really dig loud spooky music and the occasional bloody mutant dog leaping out of nowhere to rip your face off. Good clean fun for the whole family.