RESIDENT EVIL: APOCALYPSE (2004) Some apocalypse. What a rip! With the word "apocalypse" right there in the title, this first sequel to Resident Evil (there's sure to be more) promises way more than the story has any intention of delivering. It's mostly a rehash of the first movie, which of course was itself composed of 90% recycled material. The big difference here is that the original was set in an underground lab, while the sequel is set in the streets of Toronto (that is, Raccoon City). A number of lengthy action sequences and special effects shots prominently feature and/or destroy some of Toronto's most recognizable locations; this is likely to become a cult favorite to Torontonians, and people who really hate Toronto. RE:A starts with a few parallel plots, none of which have much plot. The infected underground lab is re-opened by its owner, the Umbrella Corporation, because some dipshit exec says "I want to see what happened down there." Guess all those security cameras were just for show. Zombies swarm out in one of the most easily-anticipated bits of quarantine break in movie history, disrupting a suburban idyll so idyllic that the paperboys are wrapping the papers in plastic to protect them against sprinkler systems (it's a sunny day!). So then top scientists and their families are evacuated from town, and within a scant thirteen hours, a huge wall is erected all around the town, leaving one gate at one bridge the only way in or out. You'd think this would promise a scene where the bridge is blown up, but the bridge is gated off early when an eager soldier on the wall tells his boss, you've gotta come see this, referring to the huge crowd of eager-to-leave people on this side of the bridge, as if they just assembled right now while the boss wasn't looking. And of course, there's also Milla Jovovich, returning as the plucky survivor of the first movie. Teaming up with Jovovich, first to survive and later to barter their way out of the doomed city by finding a scientist's stranded daughter, is Oded Fehr as a cop, Mike Epps as the jive talkin' black dude, and Sienna Guillory as another cop, dressed with obvious intentions toward evoking parallel video game heroine Lara Croft. Sienna Guillory might not be the most lifeless excuse for an actor I've ever seen, but she's definitely the most lifeless excuse for an actor I've seen this week. I saw Saw this week, and it had Cary Elwes in it. Raccoon City is indeed doomed; they're counting down to when a nuclear weapon will cleanse the town with the fires of un-undeath. To the filmmakers' credit, there is not a digital readout to be seen. Most of these movies take pains to let you know that the yield of their nuclear weapon is so many times more powerful than the bomb that devastated Hiroshima; this movie conspicuously avoids that comparison, because its bomb is actually quite a bit less powerful than that. While I'm sure it would do a hell of a number on Raccoon City's downtown core, for the purpose of exterminating a zombification virus therein, five puny kilotons seems insufficient. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Guillory gets stranded in town early on with another cop (doomed), and a reporter (doomed). They encounter a panicky idiot (doomed) in a church, where they encounter opportunities for both him and the reporter to be the panicky idiot. He runs off into the dark alone; she tries running outside while zombies are trying to get in! Zombies are the least of their worries though, because three of the wall-climbing tongue monsters from the first movie are crawling around in there. They are rescued by Jovovich, who has possibly the most ridiculous entrance I've ever seen. After they team up, then they're contacted by the scientist with the missing daughter. Fehr is contacted separately, after his squad of policemen is chewed to bits in an ineffective zombie standoff without any apparent objective. They team up, but not before Jovovich and her team, trying to avoid the legions of the undead which are coming back to life to chew on the flesh of the living, walk through a GRAVEYARD. One of them is soon heard to complain "There's too many of them!" No shit. Other than the scenery, the only significant thing this movie offers that the first didn't is the Nemesis - a semi-undead (I guess) behemoth that has a minigun in one hand and a rocket launcher in the other, designed (I guess) to be the Perfect Killing Machine. Its introduction is unexpectedly tedious; I was hoping it would do something to demonstrate how badassed it is. Instead it stood in one place, took a few bullet hits in the chest without flinching, and mowed down a room of cops with a machine gun. Before it mows down all those cops though, it is shot at by a police marksman who, since he's been shooting zombies, must be cognizant of the importance of shooting his enemies in the head, and we're shown explicitly that he's skilled at it. The Nemesis is not very fast moving, so this cop has no excuse for shooting it twice, in the CHEST. Then he's killed. Later on, Milla herself has enough skill and presence of mind to shoot its ankles while she's sliding away from it, on her back. Has nobody noticed that its head is entirely unprotected? The last few minutes of RE:A offer up a plot twist that probably should have been the basis for the entire movie, given the scarcity of ideas that build on those in the original. The movie looks great, with a cold, slick look to it - director Alexander Witt is an experienced cameraman, director of photography, and second unit director, and few of this movie's many, many flaws can be stamped on his forehead in red ink, except of course that he agreed to film them. The script and story, however, are credited to Paul W.S. Anderson, who gave us the original and, more recently, the depressingly shitty Alien Vs Predator. It's nice to see a horror(-ish) movie these days that's violent enough to get an R - I can't help but wonder if RE:A is going to be the last of its kind for a while. But that alone isn't enough to make the movie worthwhile, especially when it's weighed down by such a stupid story and mostly inert cast; even Fehr, who has previously demonstrated charisma most actors would envy, is a dead zone here. Jovovich fares the best, less the semi-convincing asskicker of the first movie (too silly here - come on, a girl that skinny can fire a shotgun one-handed without a problem?), but with three or four more good expressions than Guillory, who has the same stony facial nothingness throughout. She would've made a great zombie. BACK TO THE R's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE