there are many things to disregard when watching a resident evil movie, but certain individual entries in the franchise make it harder to do so. conversely, there are expectations to be met. also, this is true of the brain-off action genre as a whole. on face value, re5 sounded pretty sweet: psa was directing, and he had done really good stuff in re4, the plot was freed from the original games and all over the map in an entertaining way, several old characters were back, milla jovovitch was still amazing. well, no. the movie failed on all those counts, except milla jovovitch, though efforts were made to ruin alice by saddling her with a kid. (action movie, you are not alien 2. nothing is. except alien 2.) i was disappointed in... wait, no, every thing. re4 was stylish, re5 is not. the action in re4 was batshit and memorable, re5 is at least 75% boring shootouts. and because re4 was stylish and batshit, it was watchable even in the most over the top moments; most of the action in re5 is not. watching regular guys shoot and get shot at for minutes on end while inexplicably invulnerable - the nadir of it is when there are multiple zombies shooting automatic weapons at a car filled with people and no one gets hit - is stupid and annoying in the worst way. also, an army of zombies with guns. they lose. the movie doesn't sell this idea at all. the plot is so poorly thought out that the fact that the dialogue is atrocious pales in comparison. despite the "resident evil" name, the franchise rests on alice, like bond or ethan hawke or bourne. the movie doesn't spend enough time on her, in favor of fanservice ("look, the other characters you haven't seen since the beginning! they just shoot at stuff and have a few generic lines, but they are here!") or just bringing back familiar faces ("look, it's... actually it's a clone, and another clone.") the attempt at emotional beats is awful and cringe-worthy despite being predictable (of course the kid gets taken, not killed and so on). the various scenarios seem cool, but bringing back the huge axe zombie - x2!- and having alice again tag team against it/them just highlights how lackluster the action is now, and moscow is just interminable boring shoot outs. in fact, the best action scene of the entire movie is the fight at the end, and that says it all: it's a normal fight with pretty regular, though fluid, choreography - especially michelle rodriguez's part - but the best this not-even-mediocre movie offers.