Resident Evil: Apocalypse

Well, let's face it, it's a brainless piece of crap, but blaming a film of this kind for a dumb script and zero logic is like mocking Arnold Schwarzenegger for never playing Hamlet. The film has a fairly brisk pace, there's always something going on (shooting, burning, exploding), the speeches are kept to a minimum so it doesn't matter that there's not the acting is not good (and Mila has never been a good actress and that will never change). Some of the action is interesting, some is unfortunately messy, cluttered, overly edited and rather sterile in terms of brutality – Anderson could have pushed the envelope more. Passable as an unintentional comedy. (15.01.2005)

Zero expectations = no possible disappointment. And that's what works here. Solid action zombie killer film with sexy Milla Jovovich (a pleasant counterweight to the ubiquitous musculatures), a correspondingly stupid story, clip editing and Matrix-stylization of action scenes. It works very well, and if you shut off your brain, you won't be offended. Witt, I think, made a pretty solid entrance to the silver screen, although, as far as we can tell, Resident Evil: Apocalypse looks like a well-made intro to a computer game, so the only intruder to zero expectations was the ubiquitous urge to grab a mouse and take the action into your own hands. Which, unfortunately, I can't. So before I put my brain where it belongs, I'm giving three stars. Gotta have some relaxation... (05.10.2004)

This time expanded throughout the city and later possibly everywhere else, but in the end similar to the first one. Therefore, a solid one star for being very sexy, very action-packed, but within the character also very funny Milla. The rest is a screenplay mess thickening with each passing minute. (19.08.2007)

Action scenes lack imagination, pace, dynamics, they are very hastily edited and mostly just boring. Alexander Witt doesn't know where to go, and he ends up drowning in the putrid waters of typical B-movie production. (26.01.2005)

I rewatched Apocalypse Now and had to upgrade my earlier rating by one star. I had been too harsh. Like the first installment, this film also takes the game only as inspiration on which the story is loosely based. Apocalypse Now clearly takes Resident Evil 3 as a model (Nemesis and Jill Valentine are both accurate). The filmmakers tried to avoid scenes with "overpowered" heroes this time, but Alice's triumphant entrance into the church sure got out of hand. Otherwise, I was quite satisfied with the story. Let me just say again how much I appreciate that Paul Anderson didn’t try to make the film exactly like the game. He would have definitely failed my expectations. I was okay with this loosely inspired story. (06.11.2016)