Resident Evil: Retribution arrived in 2012 as the fifth film in a series that had already survived four rounds of diminishing returns. Paul W. S. Anderson wrote and directed it, his third turn behind the camera for the franchise after the 2002 original and Afterlife. It runs 95 minutes. It grossed over $240 million worldwide, a box-office success by the standards of the series. Critics mostly did not agree.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Alice Wakes Up Underwater
The plot is a corridor. Alice, played again by Milla Jovovich, is captured by the Umbrella Corporation after a gunship attack on the freighter Arcadia. She wakes in an underwater facility in the Extreme North, formerly a Soviet naval outpost in Kamchatka, Russia. Umbrella built it to manufacture clones and run simulated outbreaks.
The film keeps cutting between the real Alice and a suburban clone living with her husband Todd and their deaf daughter Becky. Zombies hit the suburb. It turns out to be Raccoon City during the initial outbreak. The clone is killed by a zombified Todd. Alice hides Becky inside another house, and the film leaves her there.
Shibuya Square and the Level Select
Anderson treats geography as a level select. Alice escapes into a simulation of Shibuya Square, Tokyo, then a New York simulation, then Washington, D.C. and Moscow. The tagline promises “Evil goes global.” What it delivers is a series of rooms.
Each stop is a set piece with zombies, and each one ends when the shooting stops. The Red Queen, reactivated after the Hive was contaminated, now controls Umbrella. Albert Wesker appears on a screen to explain that he and Ada Wong no longer serve the company. The power outage was staged.
Ada Wong and the Rescue Team
Li Bingbing plays Ada Wong, one of Wesker’s top agents. Sally Cahill dubbed over Li’s voice, reprising a role she held in several Resident Evil games. Johann Urb plays Leon S. Kennedy, the rescue team leader. Kevin Durand is Barry Burton. Boris Kodjoe returns as Luther West.
The rescue crew plants explosives near the facility entrance, set to detonate in two hours. The group plans to meet Alice and Ada in the Raccoon City suburbia area. That timer is the closest thing to structure the film has. Here is how the running order plays out:
| Beat | Location | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | Arcadia | Gunships attack, Alice captured |
| Second | Suburbia | Clone Alice, Becky, zombie outbreak |
| Third | Underwater facility | Jill interrogates Alice |
| Fourth | Shibuya Square | Alice fights zombies, meets Ada |
| Fifth | New York | Two Executioners defeated |
| Climax | Raccoon City suburbia | Rescue team rendezvous, explosives countdown |
The Returning Cast Problem
Anderson brought back faces from earlier films. Sienna Guillory returns as Jill Valentine, now brainwashed. Michelle Rodriguez returns as Rain Ocampo, Colin Salmon as One, Oded Fehr as Todd and Carlos. The film runs two versions of Rain and Carlos, one good and one evil. In this paper’s view, it does nothing with the idea.
Ali Larter, Wentworth Miller and Spencer Locke do not return. The film mentions their characters’ absence and moves on.
The three best things here, ranked:
- The 3D and visual effects, which are genuinely well mounted.
- The fight choreography, staged with real weight.
- Li Bingbing’s Ada Wong, underused but the only new character with a pulse.
A Franchise Running on Fumes
Retribution was planned to shoot back to back with a sixth installment. Anderson chose to focus on this one instead. Filming ran in Toronto from mid-October to December 23, 2011. A sixth film, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, arrived in 2016.
Critics criticized the characters, plot and acting, and praised the 3D, visual effects and fight choreography. Both reactions were recorded. Neither rescues the whole. Anderson can stage a shootout. He cannot make you care who is in it.
The deeper problem is that Retribution has no stakes. Alice cannot die. The clones do not matter. The simulations are not real.
What Metacritic Scored
Metacritic scored it 39/100. That is the shape of the thing: a feature-length corridor with a countdown attached.
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