After battling the deadly Umbrella Corporation in four films, Milla Jovovich returns as competent killing machine Alice, teeing it up for another round against flesh-eating undead and malevolent corporate executives.
But the dastardly Umbrella Corporation has wised up and is finally employing muscle in ways guaranteed to crush Alice and her allies.
No more cool helicopters or ex-military assassins.
This time Umbrella has hired a lobbyist.
In his third film based on a popular video game, director/writer/producer/key grip Paul W.S. Anderson depicts creepy Umbrella executives meeting with Bayard Leek (James Cromwell) a representative of Maple Lamprey, LLC a top Washington D.C. energy lobbying firm.
Following Leek’s advice, Umbrella throws a party for a prominent senator running for reelection.
The senator’s campaign later files reports stating they received 71 donations totaling $39,400 from Umbrella Corporation executives and their wives.
Not long afterwards, under the senator’s urging, the Department of Energy awards the Umbrella Corporation a $459,000,000 grant to develop more environmentally conscious citizens.
Umbrella uses the loan to pay executive bonuses and then funnels the remaining three million dollars into research that mutates the dreaded T-virus
Umbrella agents then transport this new virus around the country and taint the water supplies of New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
The result is the creation of ‘green zombies.’
This new breed of undead demonstrates a crude form of environmental awareness, picking up soda cans and Styrofoam containers as they shamble about in search of living flesh to eat.
Alice and her pals quickly discover these new zombies cannot be dispatched with semi-auto shots to the head. They are protected by the Department of Energy. No one may harm them without a waiver from a federal judge.
Hanging up her guns, Alice grabs a briefcase, partnering with a former 60s radical (Howard Hessman), who now works as a public interest attorney. Together they struggle to win in court the right to pot zombies, foil the Umbrella Corporation, and pay back the oily Bayard Leek.
Sadly, the courtroom sequences fell flat, though Hessman shone brightly in a scene where he attempts to cross-examine a green zombie without getting bitten.
Original music by tomandandy, a Siamese twin who refused to let two heads on a single body stand in the way of a composing career.
Three stars for letting Milla Jovovich wear her slinky outfits in court.
