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Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich

Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich

Synopsis of the DVD Movie: Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich

Alice (Milla Jovovich), one of only two survivors of the contained biochemical disaster in the first Resident Evil, has been subjected to biogenetic experimentation by the vast Umbrella Corporation and becomes genetically altered, with super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. These skills and more will be needed if anyone is to remain alive. Alice is joined by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory), a recently demoted member of Umbrella Corp's elite Special Tactics and Rescue Services (S.T.A.R.S.), Terri Morales (Sandrine Holt), Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), L.J. (Mike Epps), and Nicholai (Zack Ward) who must survive and escape what is quickly becoming a City of the Dead. To reach their goal, they will need to battle their way through the relentless onslaught of the ravenous undead, as well as Umbrella forces and terrifying bioengineered weapons, the most deadly of which is the colossal, heavily armed assassin, Nemesis.

DVD Movie Rating for: Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse

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Movie Plot of: Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse

The nightmare isn't over, General Cain ordered The Hive to be reopened, and in doing so contaminated all of Raccoon City, a city of the dead, with Alice stuck right in the middle. Now, along with other surviors, Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliviera and his Captain, Nicholai, they must fight to survive, to escape the nightmare that has plaqed Raccoon City. But now there is a new threat: Matt Addison has fully mutated into a seemingly unstoppable creature, code named Nemesis, who will stop at nothing until everything around it is dead, but it also has another agenda...

DVD Production Details of: Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse

Resident Evil 2 Apocalypse Production Notes

Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse Easter Eggs

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Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse Director Alexander Witt

HE directed big-name actioners like Black Hawk Down, Daredevil, Italian Job, Pirates Of the Caribbean, Speed and Twister.

But you wouldn't know his name.

That's because Alexander Witt was second-unit director on all those films, the man behind the visual style and the high action.

'The car, the boat, the bus and the helicopter chase scenes - I'm responsible,' Alexander Witt told The New Paper over the phone from Chile.

The movie director is the one who directs the actors.

The second-unit director is in charge of making audiences jump or cower in the seats.

After 12 years, Alexander Witt has made the jump cut himself, helming his debut feature, Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

And it's a tall order, one the 1.8m German has risen to - going by box-office receipts - admirably.

RE: Apocalypse is the sequel to the US$100 million ($169m) hit Resident Evil (based on the gaming phenomenon of the same name). Sure, he felt challenged with the encore.

'I have no problem with the visuals and the action. I am very confident there,' the 52-year-old Alexander Witt said. 'My main challenge was working with actors.'

Not exactly unknowns, the cast of includes Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory (The Time Machine) and Oded Fehr (The Mummy).

The women are the lynchpins in the movie, stronger than the men put together.

Milla Jovovich, is a very strong woman in real life,' said the still-single Alexander Witt , who admits to a preference for strong women. 'As you know, she and her mother went to the US from Russia when she was just 11, with nothing.'

When we last left Milla Jovovich, character Alice, she was asleep. In the follow-up movie, she wakes up and joins forces with the lead characters in the popular Capcom game to battle the Undead.

Milla Jovovich, is a collaborative person,' Witt described his leading lady. 'She was so into her character, she spent three months just prepping for it.

'Physical preparation - Milla Jovovich, learned martial arts, and she had to get totally involved in the process of the film-making. She was very helpful to me as a new director.'

Also new to Alexander Witt are video games, as he prefers outdoor sports (biking and tennis).

The movie producers had noticed his work on Daredevil and passed the RE: Apocalypse script to his agent. The rest went according to the 'game plan'.

'I took 30 people to the theatre to watch it, and they laughed and jumped,' Alexander Witt said. 'You don't have to play the video game to follow the plot.'

His own influences are 'from working with Jan de Bont and Ridley Scott'.

Alexander Witt origins are global: Chile, then Mexico for seven years, and then Europe for several years before settling in Los Angeles.

He is back in Chile shooting a commercial for Texaco and there are script meetings waiting in LA.

Another actioner? He believes so, yes.

'I would like to work more with actors, in action but with more story to the drama,' he said. 'I prefer European films myself, they tell stories better.'

'And Hero,' he remembered. 'That's a good film from China.'

After RE: Apocalypse, you'll remember Alexander Witt .

Cast of the movie: Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse

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Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
 
Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse starring Milla Jovovich 
  

Reviews of the movie: Resident Evil 2 : Apocalypse

Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse works well for the most part. It does a decent job of incorporating some aspects of the video game without mimicing the game plot identically, as well as tying the two movies together and explaining how this zombified, high velocity threat began in the first place.

Converting a video game or comic book into a movie is a tough sell. Your target audience-the fanboys-are the ones most likely to be overly critical of what each fan has preconceived into their mind as the way it's supposed to happen. The film manages to attract and appeal to the action movie fan in a tight zombie context.

Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse picks up where its predecessor left off: Alice (played by Milla Jovovich) awakes in Raccoon City, a city of the ravenous walking dead. Major Cain, played by Thomas Kretschmann (The Pianist), released the "T-virus" on the city when going below to the Umbrella Corporation's biologic weapon divison called "The Hive." Cain is supervising the evacuation of the city and containment of the epidemic. When the process fails, he orders a complete lock-down of the city and decides to use it as a testing facility for his latest genetically-engineered weapon-dubbed "Nemesis"-in a role filled by Matthew G. Taylor.

Our heroine, Alice, who was captured and genetically modified herself, teams with STARS officer Jill Valentine, played by Sienna Guillory(Time Machine) and Umbrella Corporation security officer Carlos Olivera by Oded Fehr (The Mummy). While trapped in a city of blood thirsty zombies, the group is contacted by the creator of the T-virus, Dr. Ashford-played by Jared Harris (Igby Goes Down)-who will help the group escape the city if they locate and save his daughter, Angie.

The film has a lot of action sequences, but the camera work is... questionable. A large portion of the fight scene camera work was ambiguous and lacked coherence. There was not much in the way of blood and gore. However, there were plenty of people-munching scenes (a requisite for any film containing zombies).

Another bothersome detail: without seeing the first film, a viewer is left with no idea as to why the Lickers (mutated monsters) are present-or what they are, for that matter-unless you can just accept that they are just something icky and out to kill. Something else to note: virtually every person on staff with the evil Umbrella Corporation is foreign, and the security staff for the most part was Russian. Could that suggest a hidden message/meaning?

Something fabulous: in this day of extreme overuse of Computer Generated Imagery in films, the Nemesis is an actor in makeup and costume. In fact, the majority of the sequences and monster effects were done traditionally: zombies, killer dogs, monsters. The Lickers may have been the only CGI creatures throughout.

Final verdict: don't go see this movie expecting an artistic masterpiece, but instead an entertaining escape into action and zombies. You'll come away a happy movie goer. RE2 far exceeded a large amount of Hollywood tripe that has been flung upon the masses this summer.

“I’m kinda bored,” says a character at one point during the sequel to Resident Evil, justifying the pick up of a hitchhiker. She’s not the only one. As the years go by and action films insist on topping each other with bigger explosions, more complicated fight moves and seemingly invincible heroes, something is getting overlooked more now than ever: humanity. The fact is that we as an audience get bored with a movie if it doesn’t trick us into believing that it could be us up there on the screen.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the latest in a recent wave of movies – Terminator 3, Ecks vs. Sever, the Matrix sequels, both Charlie’s Angels – that take the human soul and replace it with a flying back flip kick off a motorcycle being launched out of a helicopter, turned around with both guns blazing at the bad guys and completed with a small grunt as the hero lands on the ground.

The original film was a pleasant surprise, a low-profile zombie movie that introduced us to Alice (Milla Jovovich), a confused woman who needs to escape her underground work facility after a horrible biological mishap transforms her co-workers into the living dead. Sure, realism wasn’t the order of the day for the original film, but Alice seemed like one of us and was easy to root for. Like the recent Dawn of the Dead remake, which hits DVD with extra footage next month, the average Joe characters seemed to be getting better at slaughtering the zombies as the film went on, and during the big scenes we could cheer on their newfound athletic skills that were effective without getting outrageous.

But, boy, does this sequel lose track of that. This time around, Alice has been subjected to biogenic experimentation and has become genetically altered to the point where she has super-human strengths, senses and dexterity. What this means to the viewer is that instead of just getting off a motorcycle, she does a triple back flip; instead of rappelling down the side of a building, she runs fast enough down the side of it that she can keep her balance; and instead of walking from one place to another, she performs old-school Superman thirty foot leaps.

Basing a movie on a video game is one thing, but there is so little actual danger in this film for the hero that it feels like she can just hit the ‘reset’ button any time she wants and play again.

The first Resident Evil concluded with the promising sight of Alice emerging into Raccoon City at daylight, ready to take on the chaos of the infected world in a less claustrophobic, better-lit environment. That promise turns out to be little more than a tease, as night falls all too quickly on the city and most of the action takes place in churches, office buildings, laboratories and the like. Now, she and her newfound friends must get out of the city walls before sunrise, when a bomb will be dropped that will wipe out everything.

Director Alexander Witt, making his helming debut after years as a second unit man, directs his movie much like the dialogue-light, style heavy stuff he would have done for XXX, Twister and Gladiator. He seems to have gotten his videogames confused during his research, which could be the only excuse for a preposterous character named Jill Valentine (Selena Guillory), who is such a blatant Lara Croft rip-off that Angelina Jolie should contact her lawyer, post haste.

Besides her, we get a Stephen Hawking-like crippled genius doctor (Jared Harris), an Emmy-obsessed news reporter (Sandrine Holt), and a bunch of S.T.A.R.S. soldiers (security for the Viacom-like Umbrella Corporation) who we are repeatedly told are highly-trained soldiers right before they get killed. Naturally, we also get the token black comedic relief in the form of Mike Epps, who never met a joke about a Cadillac he didn’t like. I could tell you more about these characters, but that’s literally all you get; like Alice, there’s no reason to care about them.

Never in one film have so many bad accents been on display, from the wandering German of the evil Major Cain (Thomas Kretschmann), to the is-that-Russian? of two S.T.A.R.S. soldiers who stick around for a little while before they get chomped, to Harris’ Alec Guinness-light Brit. The zombies don’t fare much better, reduced to mostly secondary roles and only getting to eat flesh when they’re able to sneak up on someone.

At one point, a character tells another not to worry about the undead, that they move so slowly you can just walk around them. She’s got a good point.

So, instead of just zombies, we get a new nemesis called, well…Nemesis. I don’t remember there being a sex scene in Alien vs. Predator – maybe the DVD will include it as a deleted scene – but apparently those two arch enemies did have a night of unbridled romance at some point. How else can you explain Nemesis, such an unimaginative derivation of those two movie monsters that you expect Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sigourney Weaver to run around the corner and stand alongside Alice, guns blazing, at any moment?

The monster, created by Umbrella to do battle with Alice, is so generic that you can already imagine his action figure in the discount bin at Big Lots, and if you look closely enough you can almost see the black space between the corners of his mask and his shirt.

Witt, taking over for original director Paul W.S. Anderson (who returns to produce and write Apocalypse), never met a zooming camera he didn’t want to employ. He also has a disturbingly blunt tendency to employ religious symbolism, from Alice driving her motorcycle through a church window, to a cross being used to beat a zombie senseless.

As Fake Lara Croft runs around, trying to avoid being bitten while wearing an outfit that exposes so much yummy flesh to the zombies, you realize that watching Apocalypse will leave you with no real recollection of the film whatsoever, except a lingering headache. The five false endings don’t help, either.

Apocalypse has two things worth praising: Milla Jovovich and one single scene that has the zombies rising from the grave. Although the film has stripped the actress of any depth of character, Milla Jovovich still manages to command your attention while she’s on screen, and between these movies and the underrated The Messenger, she has the goods to be a credible action star if the right script came her way.

As for the graveyard scene, there’s something hollow about any zombie movie that doesn’t have at least one shot of filthy dead people in various states of decay rising from their slumber, and at least Apocalypse does give you that basic pleasure. Then, naturally, Witt ruins the scene with a barrage of absurd flying kicks and camera tricks that confuses the audience more than it scares them.

At the end of the film, Alice discovers a “secret” that sends her reeling back in horror, shocked to realize the origin of the evil Nemesis. She’ll be the last person in any theatre to figure out the mystery, I assure you. It’s actually kind of amusing to see her learn the big mystery, and the revelation possesses the same simple, naïve charm of watching a child uncover the truth about Santa Claus.

In a movie that has so little humanity, at least there is that one genuine emotion on display.

Resident Evil Apocalypse: picks up directly after the first film, with the "virus" now leaking into Raccoon City and threatening a quarantine on the entire city. Alice (Milla Jovovich ) wakes up wearing those two pieces of paper she wore at the end of the first film. She heads out into a nearly abandoned city. She doesn't know this at first, but she's been further altered and is apparently now just a few steps below indestructible. Meanwhile, we meet up with a second group of surviving zombie hunters, members of the evil Umbrella Corp.'s elite Special tactics and rescue, or S.T.A.R.S., led by one of the actual characters from the videogame, good ol' Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) who sports a leftover wardrobe from the Tomb Raider films. Carlos (Oded Fehr) is a bad-assed square-faced hunk to replace that bad-assed square-faced hunk that teamed up with Alice in the first film. And let's not forget the painfully unfunny Mike Epps, who plays L.J. Alice soon teams with the group to kill zombies and attempt to escape Raccoon City before the town is wiped out by Umbrella Corp. One of Umbrella Corp.'s scientists, Dr. Charles Ashford (Jared Harris), has lost his daughter in the chaos. He offers the group a way out of the city if they can find his daughter. Standing in their way is another nod to the videogame, the gigantic secret weapon, Nemesis, who looks exactly like a reject from the Toxic Avenger movies. While I can't claim great knowledge of the videogames on which these films are very loosely based, I can only say what makes a good movie, and this isn't it. I've also spoken with fans of the games who at least saw the first film, and they were not impressed. In the tradition of the first film, written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (the man behind such disappointments as Event Horizon, Mortal Kombat and the recent Alien Vs. Predator) RE:A goes in so many unfocused directions, with each situation a little less developed than the last. At a point, which isn't too far into the film, you begin to stop caring and mindlessly watch the carnage and blaring gunfire accompanied by some of the most generic sounding bland heavy metal I've heard since the late Eighties.

Instead of trying to top the first film, second unit turned feature director Alexander Witt has made a film in the tradition of it. Not only does the story pick up where the first film ended, but the film also has the same disconnected feel to it. Anderson (who wrote the script) has a distinct talent for creating bland, unmemorable material that feels more like a amalgam of the techniques and trends he thinks movie audiences want rather than any sort of attempt at originality. Witt mimics that feel quite effectively. You simply don't identify with or care about these characters in any way, shape or form. They are just talking heads racing through a videogame to kill, kill, kill! Even the brief moments of the actual Resident Evil videogames seemed to feature more developed and interesting characters than these film adaptations do. Sure, Alice and Jill are cool characters, but other than the fun of watching them kick butt, do we really care if they live or die? I didn't. Add to that action sequences that, similarly to Anderson's AVP, feature such jerky camerawork that you can't even see what's happening. The entire film builds towards Alice's fight with Nemesis (which shouldn't come as a surprise) and when we finally get to it, half of it is hidden in stupid camera tricks that are supposed to look cool, but wind up looking like less than clever attempts to hide a dwindling budget.

A special notice must be made to Mike Epps, who truly bites the big one in this film. He is a terribly unfunny and terribly cliché. How many films have we seen this stock black character in now? Isn't this offensive to anyone? Studio films constantly throw in this requisite character, who spouts cheesy lines and talks about his bling (custom-made gold guns) and his Cadillac. I don't know if Epps made up his own material or if someone wrote it for him, but whoever came up with it shouldn't be allowed to write any material ever again. I'm not a big fan of Epps anyway (he always seemed like the poor man's Chris Tucker to me) but here, he is even worse than usual. I cringe at the thought of seeing him play Ed Norton in the upcoming Honeymooners movie. Jackie Gleason must truly be spinning in his grave.

Resident Evil Apocalypse does sport a few cool sequences: The first attack of Nemesis isn't the most original thing I've ever seen, but he's an intimidating force and he made me perk up a bit in my seat when he first came on screen. Some of the action sequences are pretty cool, such as Alice's adrenaline-bursting intro to the other characters (which I won't be specific about for those of you who must see this) and that race down the building you've likely seen in all the trailers. If action alone made a movie, RE2 could succeed on some level. But even many of the action scenes are botched with the aforementioned camera work.

Resident Evil Apocalypse :A is proof positive that the studios really have no idea what they are doing when it comes to making video games adaptations to film. This is the third time Paul W.S. Anderson has been involved in a videogame film, and all have been met with lukewarm response from fans and critics alike. Studios only see the numbers and the fact that all of these film's have, at least after international release and video, turned up some decent profits. They need to listen to the word on the street, the fans, who are sick and tired of seeing their favorite games destroyed on screen. Comic book films used to have the same reputation, but daring choices by the studios of interesting directors like Bryan Singer, Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro have finally given fans films that live up to the characters they love. If we all stop paying to see garbage like RE:A until the same respect is shown to the videogame projects, maybe there is some hope for the future.

 Alice (Milla Jovovich) is back and ready to face more zombies in Resident Evil: Apocalypse, the follow-up to the 2002 smash hit based on Capcom's best-selling game. This time she's in Raccoon City where the T-virus has escaped after Umbrella attempted to reopen the Hive. Now she must battle a whole city of zombies. At least she's not alone.

Fans of the game series will be pleased to see a few familiar faces. Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory) and Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr), both stars of the Nemesis Game, play a major role in the movie. Also, the famous Raccoon City S.T.A.R.S. team makes a brief appearance.

This movie features more zombies, more action and more special effects - but the plot is lacking. The main task for the group of heroes is to find a little girl and get out of the city before sunup, when Umbrella plans to nuke the city to eradicate all traces of the T-virus. There is continuity between the first movie and the sequel. We discover what happened to that poor Matt guy, learn a little more about Alice's past and see just why something as horrible as the T-virus was created in the first place.

The ending was a surprise, so one wonders if more movies are planned. What's going to happen to Alice? Perhaps the horror isn't over yet.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse begins with a recap: Alice (the striking Milla Jovovich), former head of security for a research facility run by the ubiquitous Umbrella Corporation, explains how an experimental virus was let loose and turned people into - wouldn't you know it - flesh-eating zombies.

Alice regains consciousness for the second instalment to discover that she has been the subject of some kind of fiendish Umbrella experiment, and now possesses super-human, virus-inspired combat powers and an even more emphatic take-charge attitude.

The corporation has sealed off the city where the lab is located, leaving survivors to be picked off by the zombies.

The movie (directed by Alexander Witt and written by the director of the first instalment, Paul W. S. Anderson) also follows the fortunes of several other embattled characters: an ex-police officer Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory, in tight-fitting Lara Croft chic) and TV reporter (Sandrine Holt), who plans to come out of the disaster with award-winning material on her mini-DV.

There is a plot, of sorts, inserted in between various confrontations, but the film is not so much a narrative as an obstacle course, with echoes of other movies and monsters, as well as a passing nod to the Grand Theft Auto game.

The zombies are supplemented by evil corporate dudes, slavering dogs, creatures with super-long tongues and an Umbrella-manufactured mega-monster known as Nemesis, with whom Alice has a showdown - a face-off filmed in a curiously evasive fashion (but not as evasive as the coy scene in which she escapes from a lab, naked, doggedly wrapping herself in a little white towel, leaving only one hand free for combat).

 

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Last Modified: 01-Dec-2009 18:21