Desert zombie fighting

Rating: 7/10 (11 April 2011)

Not everyone who watches Resident Evil movies has played the games - myself, for one. This means I can watch the films without measuring them against the computer games from which their inspiration is drawn, and consider them simply as films on their own merits.
So, as episode 3 opens, the Umbrella Corporation's virus has successfully turned the majority of the world's population into ravening mindless zombies except for small pockets of nomadic normal people, an alleged normal community in Alaska, the remnants of the Corporation itself in its underground base, and Alice (it has also turned the world into desert for reasons which don't appear totally clear). Alice (Milla Jovovich, from the first 2 movies) is a lean mean fighting machine - sudden death for zombies. Also, she is in some respects specially developed by the Umbrella Corporation, whose resident mad scientist keeps trying to develop a cure from her blood.
After a weak start - very much as if a particularly feeble video game was throwing random obstacles in the way - Alice falls in with a group of nomads and suddenly there is something at stake. The strength here is that the members of the group are particularly well defined individuals, unusually for this sort of movie, so that you do actually care about what happens to them.
To be frank, there is nothing of any great consequence here to condemn or praise - it is a satisfactory zombie-killing movie, and provides an adequate conduit from episode 3 to episode 4.