Movie Review: 'Resident Evil: Retribution' - New York Daily News

 Magic moment: A giant beast with an exposed brain attacks.

This week, there’s a new film from Paul Thomas Anderson (“The Master”), as well as Paul W.S. Anderson. Get your Andersons right, because the former is the one whose work is a stately, superb, contemplative drama about the nature and limits of belief, and the second is about zombies.

There is certainly a place for zombies in pop culture â€" their place, in fact, is pretty much anywhere vampires aren’t. But even so, “Resident Evil: Retribution,” Paul W.S. Anderson’s fifth film in the undead-action franchise spawned by a Capcom video game, is thuddingly awful. Though this series has had its highlights (the 2002 original and the previous entry, 2010’s “Resident Evil: Afterlife” hold up the best), this new one is not one of them. And, layered with muddy-looking, unnecessary and cash-grabbing 3-D, it gives even more of a headache than it had to.

“Retribution” actually seems even more of a video game than the first film a decade ago. Perhaps that’s because Alice (series linchpin Milla Jovovich, also Mrs. W.S. Anderson, FYI) spends the first 10 minutes, after a strange backward-unspooling recap of the previous film’s finale, jabbering at the audience from inside a video screen as scenes from the earlier movies float around her. Obviously, a recap of how Alice became the sworn enemy and ultimate threat to the Umbrella corporation is needed, but this seems lazy.

As does most of the dialogue; lazy and hyperbolic. Things don’t just spread, they “spread like wildfire.” People don’t just don’t know things â€" they say “Your guess is as good as mine.” And as Alice awakens to find herself in a sort of training facility for the Umbrella corporation, she has to shoot zombies and find friends alive in one of several simulated settings: Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin (where World War II outfits are still in fashion) and, of course, Suburbia, where in her simulated home outside Raccoon City (that is still a great name) a clone Alice in a blond wig takes care of a clone daughter.

Lines like “Ready to face Umbrella” bring to mind other, more fun variations that Anderson, the screenwriter as well as director, could have used. “Can you close Umbrella?,” “Can you break Umbrella?” and “Can you use Umbrella as a weapon?” are only three missed possibilities.

Once Alice defeats the Umbrella Corporation’s artificial intelligence unit the Red Queen â€" ah, that old Lewis Carroll influence again â€" she reunites with Rain (Michelle Rodriguez) and Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) for what becomes basically a parade of zombie shootings, group infighting and slow-motion kicks. There is a giant monster with an exposed brain who shows up, but, likely realizing his brain wasn’t wanted, soon disappears.

The still-lovely Jovovich appears more than ever to know, like her counterpart Kate Beckinsale in the “Underworld” movies, that these movies are pulp comic gunk, but that’s no excuse for the low level of effort she puts into it. To be fair, Anderson has constructed an unexciting, confusing “Tron”-y world for Alice and company this time around, so there’s not much to do except shoot whatever moves and wait for reloads and more zombies with octopus mouths.

In the next movie â€" yes, another sequel is set up at the end of this one, “the beginning of the end,” we’re promised â€" Jovovich ought to fight for a bit more coherence. Unless the title is already set as “Resident Evil: Utter Confusion.”