Yet another entry in the video game to movie sweepstakes...

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2002)

Yet another entry in the video game to movie sweepstakes. Last year's Tomb Raider movie made a lot of money, but critics weren't kind (not that that matters), and Resident Evil looks to be in the same boat. Milla Jovovich stars as a temporary amnesiac who's dragged into an underground laboratory to help shut down a maniacal super computer, along with her husband (Eric Mabius) and a cop who happened to be around when she was grabbed by a special military unit, which includes Michelle Rodriguez, who needs to find at least one role where she isn't constantly angry. Directed by guilty pleasure specialist Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Event Horizon), Evil borrows a lot from other movies, which is probably a fault of the game and not the screenplay. You can see bits of last year's 13 Ghosts (killer building), as well as Frankenstein (man-made monster), Night of the Living Dead (zombies) and even Speed (there's a scene on an underground train where one person wants to go faster and another shouts that it would make them fly off the tracks, and I thought to myself that that's exactly what happened in the 1994 thriller), among others. Most of those comparisons can only be made after the movie's over, since the action rarely lets up. Originality has never been important to science fiction/horror/action movies, they all happily feed off of their elders, so I can't really hold that against this movie. It's good fun and would make a good double bill with Tomb Raider (perhaps Jovovich or Rodriguez could join Angelina Jolie for the inevitable sequel).