About as good as the first, overall

Rating: 7/10 (1 October 2004)

After having seen Resident Evil god knows how many times, and being pretty psyched for the sequel, I finally got to see it, and on the premiere night, too. Of course, I knew that the director of the first RE, Paul W. S. Anderson, wasn't doing this, since he was busy making his dream project, Aliens Vs Predator. Luckily, I can cope with changes like that... as long as the change isn't devastating. For this movie, however, it's hard to tell... maybe the mediocre attempts at scaring the audience and providing shocks was Anderson's fault, as he wrote the script, but it may be the new director, first-timer Alexander Witt, who's responsible. Let me say this upfront; I, as many others who enjoyed the first, really liked the ending, the whole foreshadowing thing, and, thankfully, the film picks up exactly where the first one left off. Actually, it goes a little further back, to show us exactly what happened before Alice woke up. The plot is decent, about as good as it gets when it's Paul W. S. Anderson writing it. It doesn't drag... heh, it doesn't drag... heck, it doesn't even leave the slightest chance for it to drag, as it's constantly moving. The movie never allows the audience to catch their breath; apparently, someone(I'm guessing Anderson or Witt) has never heard of the danger of overdoing action sequences. For anything (at all) to be good, entertaining, thrilling, whatever... there needs to be what is commonly referred to as 'buffers'. Without those nice little talky-talky scenes in-between, heck, maybe even a dash of good old-fashioned character development, the action just ends up being trite. And that's pretty much what happens here. They try to squeeze as much action into every single frame as possible, and it ends up annoying the audience rather than exciting. The director also has a horrible habit of blurring the image whenever there are more than five zombies on-screen, apparently to (I guess) cover up a bad job on makeup... or something to that effect. If the first had too much make up and such, this has too little. The acting is decent enough. Milla Jovovich gives the same good performance that she usually does. The rest of the cast are acceptable. The characters are mostly clichés and stereotypes. Of course, by mostly I mean almost 90% of the cases. You got the stupid reporter who just wants to make a story out of all of this, despite her being in obvious danger; The bad-ass cop who's suspended but still takes her duty deadly serious; the half-witted pathetic guy who's obviously only there for comic relief... actually, scratch that last one, as he was actually pretty darn funny. For once the person who's supposed to be there for comic relief works, instead of just being the *most*(or even worse; least) laughable character. The special effects were well done, but not spectacular. Definitely not the best I've seen. The action was good, but really over-the-top. The scenes with the Nemesis range between being some of the best action in the movie to being some of the most pathetic and smirk-inspiring scenes. The cinematography is nothing special. The film introduced an unnecessary amount of characters, most of whom are just fodder for the zombies or Nemesis anyway. The showdown between Alice and Nemesis was somewhat pathetically staged, and probably would have seemed out of place, hadn't the rest of the film been of the same quality(honestly, it seemed like a video-game... and while I am quite a big fan of them, I'm considerably more interested in playing them than watching them). That big ol' hunk o' biologically engineered walking death was simultaneously underdeveloped(for what they had him/it do) and overexposed. The film is noisy and loud, but not as loud as the first film, and while the sound is often horribly overdone, it doesn't distract as much as several other big action hits. The film is also less loud when it comes to the soundtrack; it was nice to have some change from the one-note *loud* heavy metal from the first film. All in all, a pretty entertaining flick, but out of your mind much faster than it got in(and that's saying a lot, believe me). If you liked the first, are a big fan of one or more of the actors, or you just have nothing better to do for 90 minutes, give it a shot. It kept me watching through the end, and, despite a few disappointments, kept my interest as well. It just didn't stay fresh in my head for more than about fifteen minutes after the credits started, which is very little for a film with so much going on in it all the time. I recommend it only to big fans of the first or of Milla Jovovich. I suppose big fans of Paul W. S. Anderson(they must exist, somewhere) will probably enjoy it too. I will say that most who liked the first will probably like this as well, but possibly a little less due to the lesser directing. 7/10