Not a total waste of time, but nothing special either

Rating: 4/10 (20 October 2002)

For a video game conversion, "Resident Evil" is quite good. It even stays relatively close to the game for once. Unfortunately, judged as a high-budget movie, it falls short of my expectations, although it's not a total waste either.
To it's credit, the movie has some nice-looking special effects and action sequences, and there's even a somewhat successful attempt at creating a storyline with a bit of intrigue (I said "somewhat", so don't expect another "Usual Suspects" or anything).
Unfortunately, this movie once again makes the common mistake of not letting us care about the characters. They're all fairly generic, none of them is introduced properly, and they all look the same. On top of this, most of the action sequences are so incredibly frantic and haphazardly edited that it's really impossible to determine what the *** is going on. As a result, I really lost track of what happened to the character and I didn't really care either. I just a little bored.
If you like this kind of movie ("group-of-people-gets-trapped-in-facility-and-must-get-out"), I suggest you go watch the much better Aliens movies (especially Aliens), or even "Deep Blue Sea". Those movies have better characterization, more likeable characters, more suspense, and better jokes.

*1/2 out of **** stars