The video-game world has been desperately looking for anything other than Lara Croft: Tomb Raider to make the crossover into Hollywood movie blockbuster territory.
Resident Evil is not it. The violent video game is now a violent movie with a provocatively dressed -- and sometimes gratuitously nude -- Milla Jovovich as the supposedly superfit, kickboxing, martial artsy heroine.
With Jovovich paradoxically providing the bimbo factor as well as a lot of the wildest fight action, the movie is clearly aimed at teenaged boys. As a result, the restricted rating in Ontario could deter the movie's core audience.
In any case, the gruesome body count, the head-banging music score by Marco Beltrami and freak rocker Marilyn Manson, the hordes of zombies and a stupid sci-fi plot should endear Resident Evil to the game players.
The pace of the movie is relentless, aping the effect of playing one of the four versions of the game. The movie invokes all the familiar icons, from the Umbrella organization to Raccoon City, from the Red Queen to her hive headquarters deep underground.
What is new is a cast of what the filmmakers are calling "fresh characters," invented to ensure the game enthusiasts cannot predict the outcome.
Unlike Lara Croft, Resident Evil does not depend on a franchise character to carry it through the action. Ergo, you get Jovovich plus a motley crew of other lesser names, including Michelle Rodriguez of Girlfight fame. Here she has the same mean, heavy-lidded look she used in her movie debut, but she is still waiting for some decent lines of dialogue in this one.
As for the story, it's generic stuff. A virus turns the workers in the hive into drooling zombies who feed on the blood of humans. A combat team is sent in to find out what happened. Few of the soldiers will return. Meanwhile, there are subplots involving subterfuge, espionage and memory loss.
The movie, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat) is reasonably well made. It is driven by special effects, including computerized graphics, the absurd makeup for the zombies and a CGI uber-monster that poses a danger the undead cannot deliver.
But there is just a tad too much Night Of The Living Dead in Resident Evil for the filmmakers to claim any kind of originality. And John Carpenter's Ghosts Of Mars is recalled in the train sequence.
Meanwhile, the plot is pop culture gibberish. In the end, Anderson's movie delivers a knockout punch for teens and/or game fans but may repulse or bore everybody else.
(More on: Resident Evil).
(This film is rated R)
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