Page 1 of 3
The ass-kicking action in Damnation is loud, grisly fun - the problem is that there isn't enough of it....
Sony / 100 Minutes / 2012 / Rated R / Street Date: September 25, 2012
Resident Evil: Damnation is so throttlingly complicated in terms of plot structure that it's hard to pin down. I don't mean to imply that all video-game-turned-movie-franchises need to be smooth-brained pieces of idiocy to work within their subgenre, but while watching this straight-to-video sequel (apparently it's a sequel to Resident Evil: Degeneration the movie and a prequel of sorts to Resident Evil 6 the video game), I constantly wondered why it needed to be as labyrinthine as it is.
I mean, you have an Eastern Bloc country in the midst of a seriously brutal civil war, one in which hideous mutant zombie-creatures are being used as soldiers of sorts, and American badass Leon (Matthew Mercer) is sent in by US forces to figure out what's going on. In keeping with the potential for dumbass fun here, Damnation should spend maybe ten or fifteen minutes setting up a government conspiracy or something equally mysterious, and then unleash Leon's zombie-murdering skills on full blast, no?
This is not the case. There is action in parts of Damnation - without question its greatest sequences - but the CGI movie's needlessly twist-driven Tom Clancy narrative is just too much to bear. Truth be told, this writer isn't a gamer, and doesn't have much affinity with the Resident Evil world (aside from enjoying Milla Jovovich in her tight catsuit in one or two of the movies), so maybe I'm missing the boat. But I bet even diehard fanboys will wonder why things are as noisy and confusing as they are here.