Sunday, September 12, 2010

Movie Review 43: Resident Evil: Afterlife




Title: Resident Evil: Afterlife



Director: Paul W.S. Anderson

Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes

Genre: Horror, Action

This is the fourth instalment of the Resident Evil movie series and it starts off where the third instalment ended. The world is infected by a super virus which turns all infected humans into undead. Alice (Milla Jovovich) is one of the survivors of this apocalypse. She desperately searched for Arcadia… a place where there’s safety and is free from infection. This movie is loosely based on the Resident Evil game series.

This is the first decent film that I have watched since I started movie going two months ago. I have not watched any of the first three movies before so I had no idea what happened in the beginning of the movie. Despite that, my familiarity with the Resident Evil universe through the game series quickly caught me up to date to the developments. This film is only loosely based on the Resident Evil game series as the main character in the game is Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine while in this movie, Alice is the lead cast. Maybe Alice is a character in other version of the Resident Evil game series (e.g. Wii, PSP, GC, etc.)... I played only those on the PC and PS.

Anyhow, I think that Milla Jovovich, as a superhuman hard-ass chick I is pretty good… although losing her powers in the beginning should have resulted in her dead in the plane crash. As for the newcomer in the series, Chris Redfield (Wentworth Miller), I think he’s pretty good as Chris Redfiled, although his screen time is really limited... would have like to have him having a bigger impact in the story development. In this film, his involvement doesn’t really change the story much. But I still really like his soulful eyes as in Prison Break, so I might be biased :P. And then, there’s a third character, which I presume exists in the previous series as well... Claire Redfield (Ali Larter) Chris’s little sister. I think she is by far the weakest character in the film... not that she’s very bad... just relatively the weakest one. It is quite obvious she is forcing emotions on her face which resulted in a very unnatural look.

As for the actions, they are pretty awesome... although those who watched the film previous instalment might find it to be the same bland thing if it’s the same. There’s one weak point though. I think the director uses too much slow motion in his action scenes. Slow motion actions are awesome when employed correctly. However, in this film... these slow motion scenes seemed like even longer than the normal motion action scenes (I feel only, I didn’t time them, okay). I think it would have been better if he could cut down on these slow motion scenes. On another point, I love the hammer/axe wielding executioner... he really is similiar to the one portrayed in RE5 of the game. And due to that, I think that he overshadows Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts), who is the film’s main antagonist. The final fighting scene between Wesker and Alice/Chirs/Claire is a little bit anti-climatic... not much ooohs and ahhhs scenes.

Anyhow, I believe that after watching this film, it made me want to watch the first three instalment of the film as well. I hope that they do make a fifth instalment as the director said that he would include Leon Kennedy in the fifth film, which I hope has a bigger role to play than Chris in this film... it would be nice to put Leon and Chris together... although it might result in having too much characters in the film and it might cause underdeveloped characters.

Observation: How did Luther West (Boris Kodjoe), one of the survivors, survive being attack by a group of undead in the deep dark tunnel remains a real mystery.

Bottomline: A nicely depicted film which is based on a game... much, much better effort than the likes of Tekken and King of Fighters. This film shows that you do not need to strictly follow the game in order to be successful as it is sometimes impossible to cram all info from a game into a film.

Bamboo Ranking: 4.0 / 5.0

Monday, September 6, 2010

Movie Review 42: The King of Fighters


Title: The King of Fighters

Director: Gordon Chan

Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes

Genre: Action

It was a time I (don't know what year it is) where a secret fighting tournament is being held in a next dimension to determine the next King of Fighters. All was going well, and in came Rugal (Ray Park) who stole three (actually two) sacred artifacts and made himself the lord the the other dimension. He forced people to fight in the tournament and kill them mercilessly... and the only hope the world has lies with Kyo Kusanagi (Sean Faris) who has absolutely no idea what is happening.

Sigh... I was expecting a good movie after several months of not reviewing a movie. First let's talk about the plot. The plot has absolutely nothing to do with the King of Fighters game series. It's just a group of random people fighting for a stupid title... there is even no mention of a prize! And boy oh boy, the plot holes are so evident that I don't even need to try. First, how on Earth did Rugal managed to single handedly enter a supposedly highly secured building without even a scathe through the front doors? He did not even try to hide at all! And that was before he got his hands on the artifacts, that means, he's at most just a decent fighter. Next, there's Kyo who claimed not to know anything about the sword, and hey presto, after a heart to heart with his dead father, he got the sword! And the name Rugal was mentioned several times in front of Kyo, before he chirped in "Hey, Rugal is the one who killed my father!" There is just no flow in the story... and the whole plot is ridiculously weak!

Next, it was the characters. Mai Shiranui (Maggie Q) is actually the lead cast in this movie... I never knew that. Anyway, her fighting scenes are okay, I supposed, but Rugal's and Kyo's and Iori (Will Yun Lee) are absolutely boring. Sean Faris is quite good in "Never Back Down" and it's sad to see him being relegated to a sword wielding maniac... and I still don't know whether he is supposedly being able to fight or not in the movie. First, he got his ass kicked by Mai and then he went sparring with Rugal and managed to hold his line for a long while. And the worst character of all is Rugal. Ray Park's portrayal of an evil overlord is just pathetic. Honestly, I found this Rugal to be a joker... and not the Batman Joker type joker.

This is by far the worst movie I have ever reviewed in 2010, and it is sad, because the cast is quite nice and the setting is good too... and I can't believe there is a fighting movie that's worse than Tekken! Fans or no fans, they won't like it at all.

Observation: Why did Terry stole someone's cap only to throw it away again in his next encounter?

Bottomline: Casts with high potential, but marred by disastrous script, direction and senseless plot!

Bamboo Ranking: 2.0 / 5.0