Resident Evil: Retribution - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Resident Evil: Retribution



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
The Resident Evil series has been getting long in the tooth lately, and feeling more and more stale by the day. This was exemplified in Retribution as it seems Paul W.S. Anderson is content with recycling villains and characters in what constitutes “the best of Resident Evil”. We bring back some long thought dead characters, move from various location to various location, each one simulating an area that Alice and her friends have fought in the past, and rinse/repeat till the credits roll. Nothing stimulating, nothing new. It’s still got plenty of guns and hot babes going for it, but right now that’s ALL that it has going for it.

The film opens up with one of the THE coolest slow motion battles of the series, starting right where Afterlife finished with Alice and her friends on the infamous “safe harbor” boat. Wave after wave of Umbrella baddies repel down from a helicopter, headed up by a mind controlled Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillroy returning to her role). Alice is knocked overboard only to wake up in an umbrella controlled lab where Jill is interrogating her. With the help of a few unlikely allies, Alice escapes from the Umbrella controlled facility and teams up with ex Umbrella agent Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) in efforts to escape from the base.

The mysterious benefactor who aided our heroine’s escape has a few more tricks up his sleeve, as he sends in reinforcements in the form of Barry, Chris Redfield, Luthor Vance and Leon Kennedy to aid her as she tries to blow the base and get out. However their efforts are hampered when a new type of biohazard called the plaga parasite transforms human victims and forces our motley crew of heroes into an Umbrella testing facility where Alice gains a new ward that she can’t leave behind. Realizing something is afoot, Alice and Ada head to the control center to confront their new benefactor to find out what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

Retribution is a rather dull movie, and one that rehashes much of the series before it. Paul W.S. Anderson is more content with just having Alice fight old bad guys, and see old friends, and old locations that she has already fought than to come up with anything cool. The only really neat thing going for the film is the final scene where they come up to the surface to find that the world’s basically ending and they’re forced to team up with Wesker (spoiler alert, this scene is about the ONLY cool thing that comes from the next movie. It was a great setup, but one that Anderson botches pretty badly in the next film).

The actors themselves don’t really look like they’re having fun. Oded Fehr had so much Chemistry with Alice in the 2nd and 3rd film that it’s saddening to see him nearly dozing in his own chair the whole movie. The same goes for Redfield and Leon. They’re integral characters to the games, but they’re so sidelined in their minimal roles that they are just add ins to say “see! We have the big name characters here!”. Milla is the only one really giving it her all as these films are her bread and butter. It’s not desirable, but it’s at least palatable with Milla hamming it up





Rating:

Rated R for sequences of strong violence throughout




4K Video: Video:

After seeing how awesome the first 3 films were remastered, and knowing how “decent” Afterlife was along with the knowledge of the VERY weak The Final Chapter 4K disc, I was curious how Retribution would turn out. I figured that the “decent” quality of Afterlife was due to it being released early on in 4K UHD’s life span, meaning that mastering and transfer processes have been fine tuned. Luckily for us we don’t have another “heh, that was ok” transfer, but a REALLY good one on par with Extinction. The film is no longer dark and grungy, nor bright and sun blasted, but glossy and shiny on board the cruiser. The 35mm film is very sharp and clean, with great detail all around. The film grain is light and well done, without any clumping or egregious spikes to keep it from looking amazing. Colors are bright and vivid, with a color grading that is more focused on neutral tones with Ipod level whites and brilliantly saturated colors to boot. The already great looking disc is enhanced by the obvious benefits for the HDR application, as those colors really pop and sparkle on the disc. The whites are tamed a good bit and SLIGHTLY dimmer, but no where as drastic as Extinction was. Overall, a very good looking transfer.






Audio:

Like all the previous 4K films before it in the series, Retribution is no slouch in the audio department. It’s a rip roaring mix that grabs you by the jugular and doesn’t stop till the credits finish rolling. The opening scene with the repelling Umbrella troopers on the boat is awe inspiring, as Alice and her friends fend off waves of baddies. Monsters and bio hazards on board the duplicitous ship come at you from every angle, and the tight constraints of the cargo container make good use of directional shits. The monsters can dive out of the shadow from anywhere, and the slippery slurps and crunches of the baddies are eerily accurate no matter the location. Bass is powerful and crushing like usual, and the score and action alike both benefit from the slamming and crashing of the low end. The Atmos track enhances the already great 5.1 mix by adding overhead usage from the monsters (the opening scene with the helo is awesome in that respect) as well as making the monsters locations all the easier to pinpoint. It’s not a MASSIVE improvement as the 5.1 mix was already stunning, but it fine tunes and makes an already great mix even greater







Extras:

• Undead Retribution (4k disc)
• Evil Goes Global
• Trailers
• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Paul W.S. Anderson and Actors Mila Jovovich and Boris Kodjoe.
• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Paul W.S. Anderson and Producer Jeremy Bolt.
• Deleted & Extended Scenes
• Outtakes
• Project Alice: The Interactive Database
• Maestro of Evil: Directing Resident Evil: Retribution
• Evolving Alice
• Resident Evil: Reunion
• Design & Build: The World of Resident Evil: Retribution
• Drop (Un) Dead: The Creatures of Retribution
• Resident Stuntman
• Code: Mika
• Resident Evil: Retribution - Face of the Fan
• Capcom Game Trailers

Final Score: ​

Resident Evil: Retribution is in no way a good movie, nor is it a good Resident Evil movie at that. But it’s never been intended to be a good film. Paul W.S. Anderson has built the franchise on the premise of showing off hot women, lots of guns, and plenty of nasty bio hazards being chopped up on screen for us. While it’s not a good movie, it’s certainly a punchy film with great video, awesome audio mix, and lots of explosions and butt kicking. Sadly it’s where the series starts to fade quite a bit but it’s still one of the series, and us completionists have to have at least SOME fun with the zombie fest. The new 4K UHD release is quite fetching and it comes with a few extras that the old Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray never did have. Solid enough watch.



Technical Specifications:

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Boris Kodjoe, Michelle Rodriguez, Oded Fehr, Sienna Guillory, Bingbing Li
Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English DTS-HD MA 5.1, Catalan, Czech, French, Hungarian, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish (Castilian), Spanish (Latin), Thai DD 5.1
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Studio: Sony
Rated: R
Runtime: 96 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: November 17th, 2020

Recommendation: Solid Watch