DVD Review: Resident Evil: Extinction

Milla Jovovich returns to her role of Alice in Resident Evil: Extinction, and she’s brought a lot of kick-butt skills with her. This is the third outing in the movie franchise. As players of the game know, Alice was never part of the video games. She was created wholly for the theater crowd. However, Alice has been paired up with characters featured in the video games.

This time Alice co-stars with two characters from the videogames, Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and Claire Redfield (Heroes’ Ali Larter). Both game characters are given a large share of the screen time. The villain, Albert Wesker (Jason O'Mara), is also from the games.

I pushed the DVD in with no real expectations other than to have a rollicking good time with special effects, martial arts, gunplay, and mindless violence. You just don’t walk into one of these films wanting any kind of serious message. There are no serious messages in the games, unless you count, “Don’t get bitten by zombies.”

I had a great time with the film. The action started out early and maintained terrific forward momentum. Some of the characters lived and some of them died, which I expected. And some of the dead were even ones I didn't expect to end up that way.

Jovovich’s martial arts sequences are some of the best she’s ever done. Ali Larter was outstanding as the leader of a convoy of survivors trying to head for safety. There’s not a lot of character to put on display in a film like this, and everyone connected to the production wisely allowed the violence and special effects take the lead.

One of the best – and most chilling parts of the film – was the opening. I watched breathlessly as Alice awakes and tries to get out of some kind of institution. She barely escapes death trap after death trap and ends up (surprise!) getting killed. Then our villain orders her body dumped and we see her corpse get thrown into a trench outside the facility. The trench is filled with other dead “Alices” and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand they’re clones.

Article Author: Mel Odom

Mel Odom is the author of over 100 novels. Winner of the American Library Association's Alex Award for 2002 and runner-up for the Christy in 2005, he's written in several genres, including tie-in novels for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and novelizations of Blade, XXX, and Tomb Raider. …

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