Monday, October 29, 2007

Resident Evil: Extinction - Exploding Crows!

Based on the popular Capcom video game Biohazard, or in this part of the world: Resident Evil; The Resident Evil movie trilogy started out on a high note with the delectable Milla Jovovich as Alice in a slinky red dress and army boots who teamed up with Michelle Rodriguez kicking zombie ass in a vast underground complex. The second movie Resident Evil: Apocalypse didn't live up to the same standard but was still a great urban-zombie-combat movie which teamed up Milla with Sienna Guillory as Jill Valentine.

Written by Paul W.S. Anderson and directed by the much underrated Russell Highlander Mulcahy, Resident Evil: Extinction is a grim horror-thriller that gives exactly what the other two entries did: monsters, gore, and a heavily armed Milla Jovovich with her lithe beauty and limited but enthusiastic action moves, a video-gamer's dream date. In this installment she brandishes dual-Kukri (a Dungeons & Dragon's favourite), and employs her psychic powers to destroy a flock of zombie-crows.

Billed as the the third (and was supposed to be final) part of the video game based trilogy. It departs from it's predecessors only as now our heroine is on the move, a nomad who rides the sands of a perpetual desert that much of the planet has been reduced to. The hot piece of ass Alice teams up with this time is Claire Redfield (played by Ali Larter of Heroes), leader of a ragtag Mad Max-esque bunch of similar nomads in an endless search of food and fuel to keep them ahead of and out of the way of the zombie menace.

Thankfully the zombies are still ridiculously easy to kill, forcing the filmmakers to resort to the kind of creative brutality that merits an R rating. The impalements, beheadings, incinerations, blood feasts and wholesale obliterations that punctuate the movie serve as a reminder what makes life worth living.

As a note for the future: Jeremy Bolt, producer of the Resident Evil franchise said last week that the filmmakers aren't actively working on a fourth installment in the series, but haven't ruled one out either. "We've been very pleased with the third part of the franchise, and it's done so well. Certainly we'd like to look at it, but I wouldn't want to say we were or weren't doing anything at this point. It's too early."

Final Verdict: Better than the last one but the original still holds the crown. Any movie that splatters zombie-brains on a camera lens is going to be fuckin' awesome!

Colonel Creedon Rating: ****1/2

3 comments:

Bruce Russell said...

Missed this on it's run through U.S. theaters, but looking forward to it on video.

New Resident Evil game coming for the wii. SHould be a cooker.

Major General Creedon said...

I thought the Wii was for kids? I've never actually played a Resident Evil game, was there ever a coin-op? I may have played that. Or was that House Of The Dead? Oh so long ago...

Bruce Russell said...

The wii is for kids . . .

OF ALL AGES!!! Ka-ZAA!!!