Resident Evil jumps the shark

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2014)

The first Resident Evil will always be remembered as helping to reignite the 'zombie genre.' Its sequel wasn't as well received (but I liked it, as it was the first zombie film that dealt with the 'middle stage' of an undead outbreak, i.e. not the start of it and not the desolation it eventually causes, but the panic as it slowly takes over).
There's no arguing that writer/director Paul W S Anderson had direct a stylish movie, filled with classy action scenes and blazing guns. However, just because something is stylish, doesn't mean it's that good. By the third outing, I was hoping for something a little more than Milla Jovovich just shooting and kicking hordes of zombies (and dogs... always dogs). Unfortunately, that's all this is - one shooting/kicking/knifing zombie scene after the next.
What makes it worst is the baddies - they're almost too comically bad to be believable. They all seem to come from the 'Monty Burns School of Villains.' They're so evil, they wear sunglasses indoors and wilfully sacrifice scores of their henchmen without batting an eyelid. They should be in an Austin Powers movie, or something a little more tongue-in-cheek. However, the Resident Evil films are dead serious and the baddies just make me laugh (almost as much as the truckload of zombies which can fit a thousand of them in a simply trailer - watch the Las Vegas scene to see what I'm talking about).
Sadly, even with all its flaws, the third Resident Evil film is actually better than its successors - films 4 and 5 are even worse (or as completely identical, making them all just blur into one).
Unless you're a die hard fan of the franchise, I'd just stick to films 1 and 2 - either that or you can never have enough of seeing Milla perform one flying roundhouse kick after the next in slow motion.
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