Movie Details:
Title - Retribution
Series – Resident Evil #5
Director – Paul WS Anderson
Release – 2012
Rating – R
Time – 1hr 35min
My Thoughts:
The beginning was really weird, as it starts at the end of the previous movie Afterlife, about 10min later and works itself backwards to the exact point that Afterlife ends on. Then it zips forward regularly and the movie starts.
In this movie we’re mostly at Umbrella Prime, the main base of the Umbrella Corporation. It is a big old underwater base and feels very similar to the underground facility in the first movie. It has tons of testing grounds and we find out that UC has tons of clones that they use for testing. A clone factory is there in fact.
I loved the feel of being back underground. It combined the claustrophobia of being trapped while still being able to play in these massive cityscapes. There’s Moscow, Tokyo, New York, Berlin, it’s a party for everyone.
Alice is captured, again and just like in RE2: Apocalypse, ends up escaping, with the help of Chairman Wesker of all people. She hooks up with a group of new allies who have been sent to rescue her, some of whom she’s met before. Their job is to destroy Umbrella Prime.
Now, since Chairmen Wesker is no longer the Chairman of Umbrella Corp, who is the badguy this time around? Why, the psychopathic program Red Queen, who tried to kill everyone in the first movie. Now her goal is to wipe out humanity as a whole and only Alice, Wesker and their allies can oppose her. But with all the clone suits around, Red Queen has some allies of her own. And we get to see some more familiar faces, just on the other side now. It was so weird and fantastic and I loved it.
We also get to see the return of Rain Ocampo, who played a big part in the first movie, before she was killed off. She is played by Michelle Rodriguez and I have hated her from the first movie. Here, she plays multiple clones of herself and one of them is the typical tough girl badguy who is trying to capture Alice. She also plays an innocent urbanite who has never fired a gun in her life. It was fantastic watching her play such opposing roles. Thankfully bad Rain gets her just desserts at the end of the movie by being dragged under the polar ice by sea zombies. Yeah, don’t think, just accept.
The movie ends with Alice, her allies, President Wesker (he’s taken over the White House and declared himself President) and the last bit of humanity fighting against an absolutely massive horde of t-virus infected “things”. There are zombie on the ground, zombies in the air, zombies everywhere. I’ve included a 42second clip of the ending below. You’ll have to click on it to play it. It is very dark, but that’s how it is on the bluray.
Overall, I enjoyed the heck out of this movie. Seeing old familiars come back, both good and bad, both human and clone, just made this feel fun and comforting even while humanity as a whole hangs in the balance. Tons of action too kept it from ever feeling stale or same old same old. Definitely glad I bought the whole series!
Synopsis from Wikipedia
Click to Open
Alice and the survivors on board the Umbrella Corporation freighter Arcadia are attacked by a fleet of Umbrella gunships led by Alice's brainwashed former ally, Jill Valentine; Alice is captured during the attack. An Alice clone awakens in the suburbs, living with her husband, Todd, and their deaf daughter, Becky. Zombies attack, revealing the suburbia as Raccoon City during the initial outbreak.[a] As Alice and Becky drive away from the undead with the help of Rain Ocampo, they are hit by a truck, knocking Rain unconscious. Alice hides Becky inside another house but is killed by a zombified Todd.
Meanwhile, the captured Alice awakens in an underwater facility and is interrogated by Jill. During a power failure, Alice escapes, rearms, and finds herself in a simulation of Shibuya Square, Tokyo. Fighting her way against zombies, she enters a control room filled with dead Umbrella employees and encounters Ada Wong, one of Albert Wesker's top agents.
Wesker appears on a screen, explaining that both no longer serve Umbrella, and the power outage was staged by him. The Red Queen, one of Alice's arch-enemies, was reactivated after the Hive was contaminated[b] and now controls Umbrella. The underwater facility, formerly a Soviet naval outpost in Kamchatka, Russia, was designed by Umbrella for manufacturing clones and creating simulated outbreaks to show the effect of the T-virus. Ada and Alice aim to rendezvous with a rescue crew organized by Wesker, which includes Leon S. Kennedy, Barry Burton, and Luther West. Leon's team plants explosives near the entrance of the facility, which will detonate in two hours to ensure its destruction. The group plans to meet with Alice and Ada in the Raccoon City suburbia area. In a New York simulation, Alice and Ada defeat two Executioners; Leon's team enters a Moscow simulation but is surrounded by an armed Las Plagas undead horde.
In the suburban simulation, Alice and Ada encounter Becky, who mistakes Alice for her clone mother and becomes attached to her. They also find Jill and the clones of Alice's deceased allies: James "One" Shade, Rain Ocampo, and Carlos Oliveira, who are sent to capture them. During a shootout, Ada stays behind so Alice and Becky can find their way out. The two encounter a "good" clone of Rain in the Moscow simulation. Alice gives her a weapon to help keep Becky safe. She then rescues Leon's surviving crew from the Las Plagas zombies and a giant Licker. The group reaches the submarine pens in the facility exit, but are ambushed by Jill's team.
During the ensuing fight, Becky is captured by the Licker, and "good" Rain is killed. Alice rescues Becky and kills the Licker. Barry sacrifices himself, holding the Umbrella operatives off long enough to ensure the others' escape. The explosives at the entrance go off: Leon and Luther escape flooding while Alice and Becky survive through the ventilation system.
On the surface, their snowmobile is knocked over by Jill's submarine. Jill and "evil" Rain confront the group, holding Ada as a hostage. During the fight, Alice tears the mind-controlling scarab off Jill's chest, returning her to normal. Meanwhile, Rain—now enhanced with superhuman strength and healing, thanks to the Las Plagas parasite—joins the fight, kills Luther, and knocks out Leon. Realizing she is too powerful to fight, Alice shoots the ice under Rain, who is dragged underwater by swimming zombies.
Alice, Jill, and the remaining survivors travel to Wesker's headquarters, a heavily fortified White House, staffed by the remainders of the U.S. military. Alice meets Wesker in the Oval Office, where he injects her with another strand of the T-virus, returning her superhuman abilities. On the roof, he explains that the Red Queen is trying to wipe out humanity; the remaining uninfected humans are in the base. The soldiers prepare to defend the White House against hordes of T-virus abominations.
