By Sara Pintilie/entertainment editor
Resident Evil: Extinction (3 stars)
The third installment of the Resident Evil franchise is an entertaining action popcorn flick. It is even a little better than its predecessors.
Instead of relying on cheap thrills and sleek special effects, Resident Evil: Extinction retools the storyline to focus more on the central character, Alice (Milla Jovovich).
This time around, the T-virus makes its way out of Raccoon City, and the infection spreads around the world.
The ratio of undead-to-alive has shifted greatly, but a caravan of survivors hang onto hope as they trek to a safe haven in Alaska.
The caravan’s leader, Claire (Ali Larter) orders a stop at a wasteland hotel to salvage for gas and food.
But they stumble into trouble with undead loiters and an angry swarm of infected crows.
Alice just happens to be in the same neck of the woods and saves the day. She then joins the caravan and reunites with her pals from Raccoon City, Carlos (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps).
Meanwhile, the dastardly Dr. Isaacs (Iain Glen) works on domesticating the infected for Umbrella, the enemy company from the first two films.
The film cannot be taken seriously, like the first two Resident Evil’s, but it isn’t as mindless as the walking corpses.
It has a little bit of a storyline and an interesting bunch of characters, enough to keep an action lover at bay, and the audience actually starts to care about the survivors’ fate.
This Resident Evil plays the zombie game safer than the first two. It doesn’t resemble the video game anymore and shirks off the horror genre. The infected are part of the scenery more than anything else.
Resident Evil: Extinction is just an action flick.
The movie’s ending is meek and slightly mundane. The audience just shrugs their shoulders and accepts the characters’ fate indifferently.
Resident Evil: Extinction might not be the smartest or slickest action film out there to rent, but the film is good senseless entertainment.
