Director: Alexander Witt
Writer: Paul W.S. Anderson
Cast: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Thomas Kretschmann, Sophie Vavasseur, Razaaq Adoti, Jared Harris, Mike Epps, Sandrine Holt, Matthew G. Taylor, Iain Glen
Runtime: 94 mins.
2004
Operating purely on a sliding scale, as one must in situations of desperation, it must be said that Resident Evil: Apocalypse is a pleasant surprise. Although he wrote every entry, this is one of the two Resident Evil films that Paul W.S. Anderson did not direct. Instead that honor falls to Alexander Witt, a career second unit director. Although much of the action is still a mess of post-Bourne quick cut nonsense (perhaps Witt couldn't snag any good second unit directors for himself), the rest of the film features a basic clarity that Resident Evil lacked. Somebody up top seems to have put two or three seconds of thought into the creative decisions, which is refreshing. Emblematic of this shift is a pair of stories about the two films: For Apocalypse, the actors who were to portray zombies attended a zombie boot camp of sorts, where they were trained to act as "zen" zombies or "liquid" zombies. The equivalent anecdote for Resident Evil is that Anderson told the actors to "move however they thought a zombie would."
Whether or not it has to do with personnel shifts, Apocalypse is better than its predecessor in every way. First and foremost among these improvements are clear narrative goals and character motivations. In classic video game sequel fashion, the shape of the thing is much the same, but expanded to fit in a much larger contained area. For the scene is now Raccoon City, post-outbreak. The city is quarantined by the Umbrella Corporation, who are feverishly trying to clean up their mess as a major metropolis goes all to hell. After meeting our various heroes in various over-the-top situations, they are brought together by the mysterious hand of Dr. Ashford (Jared Harris), an Umbrella scientist who only wishes to save his daughter from the quarantined area. He offers Alice (Milla Jovovich) and company information in exchange for his daughter's safety; he can tell them how to escape Raccoon City before they are devoured by the dead--or before Umbrella drops a nuke on the whole mess and calls it a day.
So we have a survival situation with a Macguffin in the form of Angie (Sophie Vavasseur). Toss in the added wrinkle that Alice is being pursued by the monstrous result of the Nemesis program, and we have a solid simple story only fuzzied by its reluctance to share with us what the hell is going on with Alice herself.
Alice is, incidentally, far more engaging here. Although, hilariously, she is again introduced to the film by waking up somewhere naked, an impulse that is doubled down upon when she ends the film that way too. Anyway, Alice's badassery has achieved the same exponential growth as the film's setting. She has evolved from implausible kung fu master to impossible genetically augmented murder god. She now says cool things like, "As you wish," and there is an incredible sequence of her and Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) snapping the necks of dozens of zombies. That may be Apocalypse's single greatest innovation: the option to dispatch zombies by snapping their necks.
Now, I wouldn't want you getting the idea that the characters in this movie are any good. Although their motivations are blessedly clear, nobody has even the whiff of an arc about them. They're the paragon of cliche, but they play those cliches to a T. As such, the cast ends up being mostly likable. It's certainly an improvement over the previous film's litany of indistinguishable white men.
"Fuck orders!" shouts meathead Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) before leaping from a helicopter, guns blazing. Although I doubt Anderson has much of a clue about the monumental levels of schlock in his writing, it seems that Witt, as well as his editor Eddie Hamilton (a regular collaborator of Matthew Vaughn), are compensating by being self-aware about it. This becomes clear in sequences like the introduction of Jill Valentine, a character that I adore despite having very little reason to. There's not much to her, but the cheesiness of the cigarette-smoking, tightly clothed, gun-toting, renegade cop is leant into in a way that somewhat redeems the vapidity of it all.
A great deal of what Witt is doing here is exactly that: redeeming the vapidity of it all. A thankless task, clearly, as he was met with scathing reviews and has not directed another movie since. Of course, one can only polish the turd so much. There are a lot of fun moments here. Alice flirting with Carlos while administering a serum. A showdown with three CGI Lickers in a church. The legitimately cool bazooka-wielding Nemesis. The ever-increasing ridiculousness of Alice's combat tactics. The ever-increasing ridiculousness of the Umbrella Corporation's atrocities. The silly ubiquity of their red-and-white-striped logo. Of course, there are plenty of missteps to bog down the highlights. Like the casting of the brilliant Jared Harris for the sole purpose of staring at computer screens.* Or the draggy subplot of Carlos's band of Umbrella soldiers just sort of wandering around. Or the crushing weight of the series' incoherent lore.
*I may be the only person in the world excited by the following piece of trivia: Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the reunion of Dummy co-stars Milla Jovovich and Jared Harris. They both acquit themselves far better in Dummy.
Apocalypse is dumb. Dumb as rocks. It's dunderheaded enough to kick off with a lengthy recap of the previous film, as if it mattered in the least. But for me, the willful goofiness makes the whole shebang so much easier to choke down.
1 / 5 BLOBS
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