Resident Evil: Retribution: Critic Reviews

During the film's final sequence the director explains all while also suggesting that the franchise's nuttiest days are, remarkably, yet to come.

A zombie plague may have laid waste the world, but apparently supplies of black leather unitards have yet to be exhausted.

Diagramming every revolution of Jovovich in wheeling and whirling action, however, Anderson is pitch-perfect when singing the body electric.

Thuddingly awful.

Some sequels suggest that no one involved with a franchise really cares anymore.

It's all the same blah-blah carnage as the first four flicks, with 3D effects hurling blood, blades and body parts into the audience amid a non-stop barrage of gunfire and explosions.

Writer-director Paul W.S. Anderson ... attempts to fill out a flimsy plot structure by making the characters' comings and goings overly convoluted.

Like an established pizza chain, director Anderson is in thrall to a guarantee: all relationships, of any significance, will be established in three seconds or less.

Endless video-game-style, violent mayhem is on display in this latest edition of the mind-numbing apocalypse series.

If they ran these scenes at normal speed, would 95 dreary minutes become a much more expedient 20 to 25?

Looks are absolutely everything in Retribution, which melds stunning 3-D computer-graphics and spectacular sets with a skimpy storyline and zero characterization.

More high-calorie, low-sense, audiovisual CGI stimulation arrives in the form of this fifth and most roundly unsatisfying entry in the previously lithe and fun videogame franchise.

It has a Rolls with spinning hub caps - what more do you want?

More of the same idiotic swill that Anderson feeds his numbskull fan base.

It's a funny thing about Jovovich as Alice: she gives the character just enough personality, but not enough to break the somber apocalyptic mood.

The Resident Evil films are not everyone's bag, although they seem to be evolving into their own brand of hyper-stylized cheese, made more extreme with each outing.

"Retribution" has actually got some very decent action and 3D effects. The story is still razor-thin. But, by the end of it all, I was ready for the next sequel, the presumed finale.

For those of us who know what we're in for with the series, the fifth installment is for better or worse, more of the same - albeit with the familiar levels of ridiculousness from its maddeningly inconsistent director/writer

You can put as much gloss on top of the shaky foundations and wooden acting as possible but as soon becomes apparent - you can't varnish a turd.

If you liked the other Resident Evil films, you'll like this, and the end suggests there'll be plenty more.

The ending threatens yet more. Let's hope the fates intervene and put Paul and Milla in divorce court before then.

More than ever, forgoes real attempts at character and story for lots of repetitive zombie skirmishes.

Even noisier, more incoherent, and more like watching someone play a shooter-style video game than its predecessors.

Resident Evil: Retribution is style-over-substance in every possible definition of the concept.

While the last movie felt clean and more character-focused, this one seems a good deal lazier, both in the writing and directing departments.