Two Hundred of Milla's Legs

Rating: Null/10 (6 October 2007)

I went into this with mixed expectations; ever since "Transformers" caught me by surprise and thrilled me, I never know what to expect. Perhaps some clever artist usually in the background might do something special that grabs. Later chapters in series films often allow this, as they are better engineered generally.
I saw the first of this series and thought it surprisingly full of cinematic ideas. Not particularly novel, but notable. Milla understands the camera. There's something happening in film types for women and its not inconsequential that Milla's body type is working where Tomb Raider's didn't. This body type is usually associated with Eastern European women in porn and its cousin fashion modeling at the supermodel level. It starts with Nastassja Kinski, and how Polanski and then Shrader directed her. I think she was a significant influence on this.
And there's the fact that Nastassja was lovers with those two directors, and Milla also with her two best. I expected that to show here. Even though her husband isn't directing, he is the producer and owner of the franchise. And he chose an energetic Australian to direct. I'll never avoid an Australian.
She was redheaded in the first one. I knew that she would not be here, but her sidekick Clair would. It matters with this woman definition business.
I sorta liked it. There's not much imagination in anything: zombies are ordinary zombies. Sets are ordinary, more from the stagy than the realistic side. The technology is distractingly goofy  does anyone take any of this seriously? We were supposed to have already two generations of tech-savvy kids. The story is the ordinary business about an evil corporation that controls the world and ruins it. Even the underground stuff is borrowed.
But what does work. No I'll say it differently: what I think matters here is how her fight scenes are composed.
Now, you should know that she is not human. She's part human, part machine and has some supernatural powers that are probably explained in a teen-daft way in some game material. So you get lots of triumphal shooting and especially slicing with some scimitars, usually associated with pirates (coming from north African Arabs, so associated with them too). Lots of fight poses.
I believe those poses are not derived from any martial tradition, or cinematic template, but are designed to showcase certain parts of her body, and how she moves. Its not about boobs here, but thighs. Everything in this movie revolves around her thighs. What you would normally think of as key shots associated with anchoring the narrative serve a different purpose. They shown her pelvis and always the same movements. I suppose they did some audience testing on this since the first one.
The story is targeted toward the what happens at the end: she kills her creator and nemesis, and discovers hundreds of copies of herself, all nude of course. Its pretty clear what they intend here.
Maybe it won't stick. But I bet it does. If it doesn't, it will be because her previously boyish face has been so surgically smoothed and puffed it seems inhumanly repellent.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.