A HOT MILLA KICKS ASS. An "Escape from the Zombies" blast.

Rating: 7/10 (16 March 2002)

When "Night of the Living Dead" came out decades ago I kept wondering how long it would take them to figure out to SHOOT THE ZOMBIES IN THE HEAD!! Well, apparently our heroes are still a little slow on the uptake - or never saw that classic! This time the zombies, former technicians and scientists, are underground in a high-tech lab that secretly develops terrifying biochemical weapons of mass destruction.
For those who care about the reasons for why things went crazy down there, suffice it to say there was a plot to steal a virus to prove what a horrible place it is - but one of the conspirators preferred to sell the virus to the highest bidder, while killing everyone else (or at least turning them into the Undead). I think that was the explanation! Regardless, a sort of SWAT team is dispatched to shut down the Artificial Intelligence computer that has taken control of "the hive" - that name for this huge multi-level subterranean laboratory.
The gorgeous Milla Jovovich, never looking better, plays an enigmatic prisoner of the SWAT team suffering from memory loss. It is a really KICK (in more ways than one) to see how she slowly regains her memory - and her martial arts skills.
Milla and the SWAT team descended into the menacing lab. . . and the scene where many of them meet their grizzly, laser-induced doom (Slice and Dice time) is a Classic Movie Moment everyone in the theater found deliciously gory. Only after that do they (the survivors) discover the lab is filled with refugees from "Night of the Living Dead" and a pack of bloody zombie-Dobermans who look as though they've been turned inside-out. Milla deals with them single-handed.
As they make their way out, after "frying" the AI computer and battling the zombies, they discover the traitor in their midst - and a gigantic, mutating monstrosity ("The Licker") with which they have a final heart-pounding battle on a moving underground train. The thing tried some "tongue-action" with Milla to its regret. Those who see it will know what I mean; it was rather droll.
Towards the end, Milla, wrapped in less than when she appeared in "The Fifth Element", faces an Apocalyptic Armageddon scene - the virus not having been contained.
The cast is generically adequate, although Michelle Rodriguez as "Rain Ocampo" clearly ripped-off her tough-talking Hispanic female character on Private Vasquez in the great "Aliens" from 1986.
Special effects are very good; the monster-thing being the highlight. Perhaps after all these movies I've become jaded, but I didn't think it was even all that gory. But that may be just me. There is absolutely nothing thought-provoking about this film, which is OK with me (although that was a failing with "The Time Machine").
Anyway, it's a fun way to kill a few hours - entertaining and exciting. 7 out of 10. And screw the pompous critics who can't see the fun in this film.
Read the credit crawl at the end. Almost every name is German. It was filmed in Berlin.