Resident Evil: Retribution

 (2012)**1/2

Resident Evil 5 picks up right where Resident Evil 4 left off (which probably isn't helpful to anyone since you either didn't see RE-4 or, completely forgot what happens in it).  The battle that was teased at the end of RE-4 plays out in reverse slo-mo over the opening credits of part 5 here.  Then, we learn that our protagonist, Alice, is whisked off to some underwater research facility in Northern Russia to be experimented upon.  Alice needs to escape, and thus, we have a movie! 

Of all the Resident Evil films, this one plays out like a video game more than any other.  To escape from the underwater facility, Alice must go through 5 zombie simulation auditoriums that were made to resemble: Tokyo, New York, Suburbia, Berlin, and Moscow.  And that's the movie, Alice fights zombies in 5 levels while clones of previous films' co-stars help hunt her down. Their inclusion was supposed to revie interest in this entry...

These movies are virtually all the same.  The best ones (parts 1,2,4) deserve three stars.  The worst (parts 3,5) deserve two and a half.  The director is very good at putting action sequences together.  Even if they're all matrix-inspired ripoffs, there are some new effects that give them a fresh spin (just with worse musical accompaniment).  The dialogue and storyline are really poor.  A couple scenes in this one played out like a SNL skit, where it's really obvious that the guest stars are just reading the cue cards and trying not to crack up.  The story is getting redundant too.  This may be a spoiler, but, in part 2, Alice gets special powers.  At the start of part 4, she gets them taken away, but can still do absurdly special moves.  Then, at the end of part 5, she gets them back again.  Make up your minds already!