Russell Mulcahy first came to widespread Australian attention via helming the outback "jaws" movie Razorback. A number of scenes marked the new Aussie Director as someone to keep an eye on and this wasn't lost surprisingly on the music industry. More surprisingly Mulcahy made the movie to making music videos, in the process jettisoning a promising movie career. It's very seldom that a Director can come back from another genre to make anything approaching a decent film, dilution of talent and all that. Mulcahy made the "Video Killed the Radio Star" clip and followed up with an avalanche of music outings notable a lot of work with Brit outfit Duran Duran. Having made a move once Mulcahy made a second move into Directing Television horror, undoubtly the lowest common denominator in the tarot pack. The Director did some episodes of Tales From the Crypt and even ????. Reputation clearly doesn't matter. Surprisingly then Mulcahy has returned to the big screen with the third movie in the Resident Evil series. To be honest he can't do much worse than Paul W.S. Anderson's initial take on the computer game adaptation.
Talk us through itAlice is having nightmares about her escape from the underground complex Umbrella Corp built below Raccoon City, and is tooling around Nevada on a bad arsed motorbike. Seems things have deteriorated from the second movie with the "T" virus destroying the environment and leaving the remnants of humanity battling decaying zombies, (sort of like the NRL season really).Meanwhile Carlos, the Para military dude from Apocalypse, is helping out a band of survivors who are scavenging for what they can get in a well armed convoy. Oh and he's also working on a new accent as he sounds nothing like he did in the previous movie. Carlos and team take out a couple of zombies at an isolated service station that is slowly being over run by sand but there's no food or other supplies on hand. Worse news arrives in the form of a large flock of crows who have been feasting on the undead and hence have been contaminated by the "T" virus. Just when things are stating to look real bad Alice shows up using some esper ability she didn't used to have over the course of the two previous movies, how fortunate for the survivors. The decision is made to try and reach Alaska where the virus hasn't spread, but in order to do that our gang must raid Vegas and no doubt fight off zombie Elvis impersonators. Seems you don't want to go to the big cities due to the zombie hordes. Anyways the Umbrella Corp have been tracking Alice via satellite and decide to drop a surprise container of zombies as a greeting present in Viva Los Vegas. Can Alice and assorted super models battle their way through, a pretty dud movie ensues. Okay so I was kidding about the zombie Elvis impersonators.
Review"Climbing the Eiffel Tower … with a high powered rifle. A few years ago that would've caused quite a stir". - Chase
If you have seen the trailer for this movie then you have pretty much seen all the cool stuff and are only left with the poorly written dialogue that patches the major scenes together. To recap, we have the attack of the CGI crow cloud, with one scene ripped entirely from Hitchcock's The Birds. This isn't as awesome as I thought it was going to be. How can you fail with an iconic Hitchcock scene? Well hello Russell Mulcahy. Our convoy of super models arriving in Vegas to see the city slowly sinking into the sand, actually that's pretty cool. And a topper, hundreds of zombies encircling a fenced off compound in the middle of the desert. Actually it's another underground Umbrella Corp experimentation place that simply screams out Romero's Day of the Dead. The eee-vil Dr Isaacs is even trying to develop a drug that will domesticate the zombies, and yes we do get our Bub stand in on the undead stakes. But still all those zombies attracted to the fence are pretty striking visually. Mulcahy isn't going anywhere near Romero's level of gore so no Dr Frankenstein kids, sorry about that. For zombie fans the usual stuff is going down. To kill a zombie you need to shot it in the head, or if you are Alice slice it up with those wicked looking knifes. The zombies eat living flesh but don't need it for nutrition, once again an idea Romero turned up in Day of the Dead. Oh and they are fast moving in Extinction. Once bitten you gradually turn into a zombie and then try for some take out. So nothing really new introduced there, which isn't a criticism as there's not a hell of a lot you can do with a zombie really end of day. Mulcahy simply mixes and matches from Romero and hopes we wont notice. We did!
Guess there must be truck loads of Resident Evil fans out there as they keep churning these movies out. For any RE dudes or dudettes some of
the stuff from the first two movies gets I was going to raise a heck of a lot of noise about the obvious issues Extinction has, (stolen scenes from other movies, Alice suddenly having psi abilities cause the script required it, dialog that even a super model can remember, etc etc), but this franchise is sort of exempt as it's basically about Milla doing wire-fu and offing a whole bunch of undead extras. Anyone going to see the movie is after nothing more, and Director Mulcahy delivers on that front to the instant glee of the teenage male fan base. Needless to say the actual script is completely crap, which once again is expected as Anderson's name is attached to it. So what the heck, you do get exactly what you dialled in for so guess the movie delivers on the trailer's promise. And before anyone asks, yes they do leave room for yet another sequel with an additional option if Milla declines the lead role. As stated there's a Downunder connection in this movie with Aussie Director Russell Mulcahy helming and showing Anderson exactly what you can do with some money shots, slow mo (used slightly too much and in some case improbably), kinetic action, fly aerial shots, and zombie heads exploding. Mulcahy however needs a much stronger script that the one he gets hoisted with here. Milla Jovovich (Alice) is once again on with the action stuff, the girl sure throws herself into that part, but is off and on with the dialog delivery. Oded Fehr (Carlos) was as usual charismatic and delivered some clearly fun scenes. Ali Larter (Claire) was slightly miscast as the strong female leader and was doing her best to channel Sarah Connor. Think Anderson popped her into the movie in case Milla decides not to do a fourth one. Iain Glen (Dr Isaacs) simply chewed it up and spat it out as the evil bastard the movie needed, quite dug his performance here. Special mention of Ashanti (Betty) this chick couldn't act to save her life and should never ever appear in another movie. Slight bit of T&A with Milla naked in a bathroom scene at the start of the movie, you don't get to see anything as Anderson was aiming for a PG13 rating, he kind of blew it with an "R" due to violence. The gals get Fehr showing off the upper body work. Tyler Bates and Charlie Clouser simply re-echoed the soundtrack that Marylyn Manson and Marco Beltrami did for the first movie. Pretty engaging and aggressive it kept my interest throughout. Summary Execution The third in the Resident Evil franchise see's possibly the weakest movie to date, though it's a toss up between Extinction and Apocalpyse for mine. Extinction was pretty uneven with a feeling that the Aussie Director has been watching Mad Max 2 a few too many times for his own good. End of day I got exactly what I expected, Milla dealing to a whole lot of zombies and the Umbrella Corp doing the best they can do to make things worse while trying for a final solution to the "T" virus. In essence this is all pretty light weight Romero stuff, and big bad George gets referenced a lot in this movie that is trying for a Day of the Dead vibe. Some cool scenes, weak plot, meh guilty pleasure. Extinction managed to generate $51 million at the Box Office in North America, which pretty much duplicates Apocalpyse, and managed $129 million World Wide on a budget of $45 million. Guess that will be profitable enough to ensure a fourth movie in the series. For trivia buffs, Extinction marks the first time a trilogy of live action movies based on a video game have hit our screens. If you don't mind Romero lite zombie movies then give Extinction a go. Not the best ever zombie flick to be released but it does have some cool scenery and Milla doing her thing. Don't expect good dialog, characterisation, or indeed plot, but do expect action and lots of it. Go ahead shoot it in the head one evening. ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ... Weekly rental time folks, though JB does have a collectable tin for around $15.
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From my notes on this movie I was most impressed with the ability of super models to survive the holocaust and then kick zombie butt. Unfortunately for
our models the blokes that survive are a motley crew of cardboard cut out clichés. Some of the zombies were showing more fully developed personalities
then the dudes infesting Extinction. The other thing I have written down a number of times is "video clip", oh dear this can't be good. Anyways
on with the review.