While "The Master" grabs this week's prestige-movie hype, that other Paul Anderson â€" middle initials: W.S.; occupying aesthetic: hyperviolent sci-fi â€" had a film released too.
It's the fifth in the "Resident Evil" franchise of loud, metallic commercials for firing/jumping/throwing prowess and zombie slaughter, aimed at that segment of moviegoers ostensibly on a break from doing the same via their game consoles.
The other sequel titles â€" "Apocalypse," "Extinction," "Afterlife" â€" tantalizingly implied nowhere more to go. But here we are with "Retribution," which finds poster gal for disaster survival Alice (Milla Jovovich) once again battling the vicious, zombie-virus-spreading Umbrella Corp.
This time, she's trapped in the conglomerate's underwater city-simulation compound, where a convenient cloning plot device allows killed-off characters played by Michelle Rodriguez and Oded Fehr to make encore turns, in this series' stab at something like nostalgia.
Sienna Guillory is back too, her character now a villainess. Maybe "Repetition" would have been a better subtitle.
As always, Jovovich's game face is admirable â€" whether giving gunslinger shade or play-acting a protective mother storyline straight-outta-Cameron. But it can't be easy when all around her are line readings that recall the glory days of baroquely dull foreign-movie dubbing.
The action, meanwhile, is the usual stereoscopic 3-D hodgepodge of slow-motion flips, sprints, swings and bullet trajectories, which begs the question: If they ran these scenes at normal speed, would 95 dreary minutes become a much more expedient 20 to 25?
MPAA rating: R for sequences of strong violence throughout
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Playing: In general release
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