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Review: Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

The first Resident Evil film was decidedly mediocre, but it wasn’t a complete waste of celluloid. It also managed to pull in a decent amount of bank at the box-office, so it’s no surprise that a sequel would hit theaters two years later. Especially one in which Milla Jovovich flashes her boobs amidst scenes of zombie murdering. Bam. You just guaranteed that every serious male geek will come to your movie. It’s no surprise, then, that not much work was put into it. None was required in order to make a profit.

In case you missed the first one, here are the basics: the Umbrella Corporation has developed a virus that can bring the dead back to life. It was unleashed in an underground lab called The Hive in the first film. Alice (Milla Jovovich), former head of security, managed to fight her way out before being captured by Umbrella for unknown reasons. It’s not exactly rocket science.

The second film in the survival horror franchise finds the T-virus having spread to the surface, infecting the residents of Raccoon City. The Umbrella Corporation establishes a security perimeter around the entire city to quarantine the area, essentially meaning that anyone trapped inside is doomed, because as an evil film corporation their job is just to mess up people’s lives. As a result of experiments performed on her by her former employers, Alice now has superhuman strength and agility. That’s going to come in handy when she has to take down wave after wave of zombies, Umbrella security teams, and Matt in order to survive.

Review: Resident Evil (2002)

I managed to avoid this series for quite some time. It isn’t that I dislike zombie movies, video games, or Milla Jovovich’s, er, assets. It’s that video game adaptations typically suck. I’m sorry, that’s just the way things have always been, and probably will be most of the time. Most of what makes video games fun is the fact that the player is actively involved. Characters and story don’t have to be brilliant in order for players to enjoy them. By having to make constant decisions that affect gameplay, we are automatically actively engaged. Take away the element of control, and a great deal of the appeal is lost.

This is why the best video game movies are those that either merely utilize video game themes and style in crafting a larger film narrative (eg. Crank and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) or recognize the inherent superficiality of most video games and make that part of the fun (eg. DOA: Dead or Alive). To act as though video games and film are equal storytelling mediums and what works for one will work for the other is to ignore the strengths and weaknesses of each. That’s like saying that because both the fire department and police department are designed to serve the public good, trying to put out a three-story blaze with a billy club and a badge will totally work. They might have similar goals, but they achieve them through very different means.

Paul W.S. Anderson apparently didn’t get the memo.

ReviewsAndrew JohnsonSeptember 8, 2010michelle rodriguez, milla jovovich, paul w.s. anderson, resident evil, zombiesComment

Review: La Femme Nikita (1990)

Note: This review contains spoilers.

La Femme Nikita received fairly poor reviews upon its release twenty years ago. Despite the negative reception, it has had tremendous impact in popular culture, spawning a remake and multiple television series. It helped establish director Luc Besson as one a new and innovative action filmmaker. Does it hold up? Overall, yes. Though it’s brought down by a weak third act, La Femme Nikita is a refreshing take on the now-clichéd “government agency hires thug to be highly-effective super agent for some reason” plotline, combining well-executed action scenes with compelling performances and a fantastic synth score.

The plot follows Nikita (Anne Paurillard), a drug addict who kills a policeman when a pharmacy break-in goes wrong. She’s sentenced to life in prison, but a secret government organization intervenes and drugs her. When she comes to, she no longer exists. Her death has been faked and her life is not her own. Their goal is to mold her into an elite assassin. If she resists, she’ll be killed.

Anne Paurillard carries this film on her shoulders and elevates it above a typical action thriller. Her performance is so varied in its extreme range of Nikita’s personality quirks that at times I couldn’t believe I was watching the same woman. At the beginning of the film, Nikita is a drugged-up, aggressive, borderline psychotic teenager with nothing but a quick wit and temper to indicate she might, somehow, be able to eventually become a productive member of society. She’s disheveled, wide-eyed and so mentally unhinged that I was convinced, despite knowing the basic premise of the film, that she was doomed to die having failed to properly adapt to any sort of physical, mental or social training whatsoever. She was simply too far gone.

ReviewsAndrew JohnsonSeptember 6, 2010Anne Paurillard, Luc Besson, Nikita, action Comments

Review: The American (2010)

It's somewhat amusing to me that the same weekend movie-goers are being encouraged to see Machete, Robert Rodriguz's carnage-filled tribute to exploitation cinema, they're also being given the option of seeing The American. Both are attempting to cater to the action crowd, but they couldn't be more different films. One is a hammer to the skull; the other is a gentle nudge to the chest.

Forget the marketing. This is not a movie about a flawless hero, it is a movie about a broken villain. Clooney stars as Jack (or is it Edward?), a craftsman who makes guns for elite hitmen. The opening scene of the film indicates there are people that would like to see him dead. We can only imagine why; the specific reasons do not matter. What matters is that it's clear he's a man living with the consequences of past offenses, both external and internal. Within the first five minutes he's stripped himself of his only tie to a non-violent world. After that, it's off to Italy for one last job and a desperate search for healing.

Those in the mood for explosions and non-stop gunfire will be disappointed. Rather than a rock-'em-sock-'em roller coaster of testosterone, this is a nuanced character study in which stillness is just as threatening as a shootout, and most of the conflict is not that of assassins and victims, but of the soul.