Escape From Toronto

Rating: Null/10 (26 September 2004)

This is a thinly disguised rip-off of John Carpenter's "Escape from New York," "Escape from Los Angeles," and George A. Romero's zombie-film series... to say nothing about the infinite amount of ultra violent video games. I have nothing against violent content in films or video games, but when I go to a movie, I expect to see something "filmed" and not so overly-digitized (Case in point: Those long-tongued monsters crawling around the church).
In 'Apocalypse' we get a female superhero: Jovovich plays "Alice," an uberpowerful genetic Amazonian-freak out to rescue a small group of people still trapped in a quarantined New World city (nifty sequence in which we see Toronto, Canada's City Hall blown up to smithereens).
The film is largely enjoyable but, as is usually the case nowadays in genre-pics such as this, the writers/makers try to insert a clever ending, and only end up frustrating our otherwise positive expectations. Although I liked REA, it was neither clever or good enough to recommend to anyone who expects anything anywhere close to the infinite amount of creativity evinced in the "Matrix" films or as 'literary' as "Lord of the Rings."
Strangely, previously released films such as "The Mummy" (1999)and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, came to mind while I was watching REA.
(NOTE: Oded Fehr, from Mummy, appears in REA)
Jovovich seems destined to only appear in TV makeup commercials or sci-fi-action films. For those movie-fans unaware, she also appeared in the orig. 'Resident Evil' film and "The Fifth Element" with (Yawn!) Bruce Willis.