Action packed and interesting, but far from scary.

Rating: 7/10 (2 May 2004)

Resident Evil
A deadly virus escapes in a top secret research facility based underground, a team of top trained soldiers/agents are send to find out what happened down there.
In the latter years it has become very popular to make movies out of popular computer games, and they often fail for some reason, i think maybe it's because there is a big difference from experiencing the story from computer games through movies, movies tells you a story, in games you act yourself as the investigator. However, this movie has a very interesting and much of the way pretty original and unpredictable storyline, even though it is probably stolen from the game, i never played the game, so i can not tell.

In the start i found the movie very confusing i must admit, not much made sense, but as the movie discovers most of the question marks are explained, although i am still wondering about a few things, but they are not so much related to the question marks, they are most related to the realism of the story. But i guess this is okay for a fantasy movie. Without giving too much spoilers one of the things i don't understand is why a team of soldiers are send into a research facility without wearing any kind of protection, couldn't it be possible there would be something in the air? Also if the AI protecting the Hive is still online, why can't they reach it that way and find the answers that way? Rather than sending a team down to discover the secret. However, if you look away from all these small flaws, the movie is actually very entertaining and driven, it is a very interesting story, though it has a lot more potential than used, but using the full potential might also remove much of the action. But maybe i am just one that prefers a deep storyline, especially about something that i find as interesting as this, i'd like a deeper look on the whole idea.
But there is never any doubt, this movie wants the action part in focus, and that it does well, this is far from a horror movie, and it's not spooky or scary at all, it's a driven action movie with a lot effects, but that is entertaining enough, just don't go into the movie expecting pure horror.
Paul Anderson has been put in charge of Alien Vs. Predator too, and if he can produce an interesting action movie like this one, then i am looking very much forward to it, because he has done an okay job to combine the storyline with the amount of action that is expected from his side, my personal preferences hopes for a deeper storyline in Resident Evil: Nemesis though.
The acting is okay, there are many main characters, and we never learn much about either of them, only 3 persons we get background information on. Generally because they each have their own reasons to be there, none of them really shines through though, except one. I think Milla Jovovich has proven to the world now that she has quite some talent, which is good, this movie is very action driven and doesn't put her acting much in focus, but i'm looking forward to seeing her in the future, because i think she has her moments in this movie.
To sum it all up a bit i found this movie rather good, it has some flaws which puts it down a little, but generally it's a good driven action movie that is worth watching if you're into this kind of movies. It's not a horror movie, so don't expect that, expect a solid action movie wrapped within an interesting storyline and you will be happy.
7/10