“Resident Evil,” the wildly successful film franchise adaptation of the popular video game series that has grossed nearly $700 million worldwide, returns with its highly anticipated fifth installment, “Resident Evil: Retribution,” written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson.
In the film, the Umbrella Corporation’s deadly T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the global population into legions of the flesh eating Undead. The human race’s last and only hope, Alice (Milla Jovovich), awakens in the heart of Umbrella’s most clandestine operations facility and unveils more of her mysterious past as she delves further into the complex.
Without a safe haven, Alice continues to hunt those responsible for the outbreak; a chase that takes her from Tokyo to New York, Washington, D.C. and Moscow, culminating in a mind-blowing revelation that will force her to rethink everything that she once thought to be true. Aided by newfound allies and familiar friends, Alice must fight to survive long enough to escape a hostile world on the brink of oblivion. The countdown has begun.
“The story-line of `Retribution’ is intricate and a bit twisty and turny, which is quite cool and will take many people by surprise,” explains Anderson, the creator and main engine behind the whole “Resident Evil” cinematic franchise. “I think the first movie had a very intricate structure, and then the films that came later became a bit simpler and linear in terms of the way they were plotted. So, I wanted to kind of go back to that original structure in this movie; but, whereas `Resident Evil’ had a more modest scale to it, here we have the intricate structure of that first movie with a much grander scope to it. Hopefully we have the best of both worlds…”
Tying the films in conjunction with the celebrated video games was also a primary concern for Anderson. “We took fight moves directly from a scene with Ada Wong in the game Resident Evil 4, and then Resident Evil 5 has a car chase through the desert in which our heroes are driving an armored Hummer with a machine gun in the back of it that we recreated with a Phantom Rolls Royce in the Red Square.”
Indeed, “Retribution” aims to be the most ambitious “Resident Evil” movie to date. “One of the reasons this franchise has grown is because we have never rested on our laurels and just done the same thing again,” says Anderson, “but it’s definitely a pressure to up the ante each time. The last movie was such a success that I wanted to kind of push the envelope with this one. And part of that has to do with the whole globetrotting nature of the film. We have shot in Moscow’s Red Square, Shibuya in Tokyo, Washington D. C. and Times Square. And we have even been out in the real snow and ice of Alaska! So, we have tried to make the first epic undead movie with `Resident Evil: Retribution.’”
Opening across the Philippines on Sept. 12, “Resident Evil: Retribution” is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. Visit www.columbiapictures.com.ph to see the latest trailers, get free downloads and play free movie games.