ENTERTAINING is what I want movies to be. They need to sweep me up and carry me into their story. If you have been reading my previous reviews you know that request is a tall order, since many films I have seen were abysmal. Now just because I want to be entertained doesn’t mean I only want light and bright stories. I walk into a theater with the assumption that the movie I am about to watch has some redeeming quality. Whether it is a documentary, horror, romance or science fiction film; I simply want to be engaged with what I am seeing on the big screen.   LIKE any other medium films can be made with an ulterior motive in mind. A picture may have a humorous bent to it; but underneath the surface, the writers had a serious message or topic they wanted to convey to the movie watching public. I have learned many things by watching documentaries; they are usually written in a straight forward manner which at times comes across like visual lectures to me. That is a compliment by the way. This does not mean I have not learned something from films with fictional stories. Any movie genre can provide a learning experience in my opinion. I have seen some sensational cinematic stories that appeared to be total works of fiction; however, the stories paralleled actual events covered in the news. This is no different than some of our great novels that were written as satires to shine a light or poke fun of real situations. The reason I am mentioning all of this is because of today’s movie. I found the story curious because it seemed to reflect the current political environment throughout the country.   ALLIANCES needed to be formed if Alice, played by Milia Jovovich (The Fifth Element, The Three Musketeers), was going to have any chance to put a stop to the undead once and for all. This latest installment to the Resident Evil franchise starred Iain Glen (The Iron Lady, Game of Thrones-TV) as Dr. Isaacs, Ali Larter (Final Destination franchise, Heroes-TV) as Claire Redfield, Eoin Macken (The Forest, The Night Shift-TV) as Doc and Shawn Roberts (Jumper, X-Men) as Wesker. Out of the entire cast Milia had the strongest screen presence, since the script was mainly written for her character. I thought she did a good job. Despite having a fuzzy memory of the previous films, the story was easy to follow. Unfortunately the numerous action scenes were filmed in such a quick, choppy way I had a hard time figuring out who was fighting. The scenes were literally just a blur of shapes and colors; it became quite annoying early on. As for the story all I can say is it was typical for this type of video game based movie. I lost my interest at various times and to tell you the truth it was not until the last part of the film where I felt I was getting my money’s worth. For the video game players out there this chapter will appeal to them; to the rest of us it will only be a brief distraction to the world around us.

1 ¾ stars