Resident Evil: Apocalypse was wisely adapted from my favourite game, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. The gist is: a super-hot renegade cop with nothing to lose (Jill Valentine, played by the impossibly gorgeous Sienna Guillory) battles her way throughout a zombie-ridden city with a super-hot renegade commando with nothing to lose (Carlos Olivera, played by the dangerously gorgeous Oded Fehr). All the while running away from a gigantic uber-zombie named the Nemesis, a super-hot renegade mutation with nothing to lose. The movie adaptation adds its own little touches, with varying results of success. They include:
1) Alice. This is awesome.
2) Terry, the Gale Weathers-ish newsreporter. This is alright.
3) LJ, the black pimp-talking comic relief. This is awful.
So these characters all meet up in some form or other another to search for Dr. Ashford (VIDJAGAME REFERENCE!!!)'s cute little daughter Angie. And during all this, that unfortunate virus from the first movie spreads throughout Toronto, simutaneously wreaking havoc and afflicting all the infected citizens with a strange slow-motion filter. The horror.
Now, a good movie this is not. There are plot holes, the dialogue is sketchy, the delivery of said dialogue is sketchier, the editors were either on speed or were monkeys (god, I hope they were monkeys), and the ending was needlessly strange and offputting.
Then there was LJ. And... that's pretty much all the mention he deserves. Nemesis was quite disappointing, considering that he was a gigantic factor in the third videogame, and he was used in like, three scenes. But because of his limited screentime, I don't quite consider him to be a detriment to the film.
But aside from those three and a half things, Apocalypse had me by the balls. It moved quickly, never had me bored, occasionally had me in suspense, and was overall much more entertaining than the first film, which, let's face it, dragged many a time. Apocalypse never dragged. There were SO many scenes of hot chicks shooting zombies and other creatures! And Alice blew up a licker with a motorcycle! And there was a little girl with a british accent! And it wasn't Raccoon City! It was TOTALLY Toronto! You could see the CN Tower and the CIBC building and omg!
Sienna Guillory is note-perfect as Jill, meaning that she perfectly emulated the stiff, awkward videogame voice acting and strange movements of Jill from RE3. But she also worked that bustier, mini-skirt, and handgun like nobody's business, so I? Am not complaining. Oded Fehr is equally sexy, and fares somewhat better in the acting department. He did, however, get a lot of the cheesier lines. The tiny little cute british girl, her dad, Gale Weathers, the hot blonde russian bad guy, and LJ all gave serviceable performances. But... man, was LJ annoying.
And then we come to Miss Jumpkick Dogs In Face herself, Milla Jovovich. What I wanted from this film was for it to go completely out of its way to illustrate how much of a hardcore, punk-rock bad ass that Alice is, and Apocalypse lovingly did exactly that. Alice drives through a church window on a motorcycle. Alice snaps zombie necks as if they were sedated chickens. Alice runs through Toronto City Hall, avoiding machinegun fire from a helicopter outside. Alice, confronted by guards, drops her handgun, and then at the last second drops to the ground herself, catches the gun, and blows them the fuck away.
I LOVED IT.
I've always had a thing for strong female protagonists. It started with cheesy slasher films, built with Buffy, and will probably peak here with Alice. Milla is amazing. She really, truly is. She makes everything Alice does here look easy as apple pie (but that's confusing because apple pie is somewhat difficult to make) and handles guns even better than Sienna does. There were times, however, when the film knowingly dumbed down Jill's character to make Alice look better. The scene at the school with the zombie dogs, for instance. It was a little disconcerting to see my favourite videogame heroine take a beakseat to a figment of Paul W.S. Anderson's imagination.
Because, really, Apocalypse is pretty much a showpiece for Alice with the backdrop of the Resident Evil universe to make it marketable. You can't help but feel that Alice is meant for some greater destiny, and all this shit about Umbrella, and Toronto being overrun with zombies, and Sienna Guillory in an awesome bustier is merely filler to move her along to whatever awesome fate that will most likely be featured in the third Resident Evil film.
But that? Is okay. Because Milla is truly a good actress. No, don't look at me like that. The ending fight with her and a certain... shall we say, familiar menace was pretty much the only time in both movies that Alice was humanized. Milla was great here - you could see the shock of recognition register on her face, you could see the inner turmoil, the conflict, the genuine tears... you really have to see the scene to understand the what the fuck I'm talking about, but Milla is perfect in her one and only chance to humanize Alice in some form.
The movie ended on a weird note, but with Apocalypse, the whole is greater than its parts. It's really an 'experience' movie. Shut off your brain, just accept the fact that Toronto is on the verge of zombie destruction and that a genetically altered supermodel is kicking ass and taking names within it. Once you do, you'll realise that the true beauty of the movie lies in the fact that it doesn't exude beauty, or resonance, or depth at all: it's just really, really fun.
