RESIDENT EVIL: DEGENERATION
February 11th 2009 01:10
Category: Videos
Director: Makoto Kamiya
Screenplay by: Shotaro Suga
Producer: Hiroyuki Kobayashi
Starring: Paul Mercier (Leon S Kennedy), Alyson Court (Claire Redfield), Laura Bailey (Angela), Steve Blum (Greg), Michael Sorich (Senator Ron Davis), Crispin Freeman (Fredric Downing), Michelle Ruff (Rani) & Roger Craig Smith (Curtis Miller)
Produced by: CAPCOM & Sony Pictures Entertainment (Japan) Inc
Released by: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Running Time: 92 Minutes Rating: MA 15
Strangely this film never seemed to get as much hype as Appleseed Ex Machina, in fact the only time I actually heard about it was seeing it mentioned in passing in a magazine, whose title I forget, that I was skimming through a month or two ago. If you remember Appleseed Ex Machina was hyped as being the latest thing in computer animation that would change the face of animation, was filled with action to the gunwales and just to round things off had legendary director/producer John Woo involved in its production. Lets face it Warner Brothers, who were responsible for the English language release, went over the top to promote this work and at the end of the day it just didn’t live up to all the hype, not by a long shot. Now Sony and their partners CAPCOM have decided to dip their toes into the ocean of computer animate features.
Somehow this ‘marvel’ of human ‘ingenuity’ manages to break out of containment and containments the entirety first of the Umbrella facility in which it was created then the wider community of Raccoon City. As a result the proverbial literally hits the fan and things go pear shaped really really quickly, the military decide that intervention is called for and without so much as a by your leave nuke Raccoon City. There are only two survivors of the tragedy that was the Raccoon City incident, Leon S Kennedy and Claire Redfield. Everyone else died in the nuclear holocaust, regardless of whether they were infected or not. When the dust eventually settled Umbrella Corporation was finished, a President of the United States was forced to resign and various other socio-economic incidents occurred but the exact nature of what had happened and who was responsible was swept under the carpet.
Seven years later down the track and the details of Raccoon City may not be completely known but people in the community of Harvardville are worried about the presence of the Wil Pharma Corporation and its new research facility that has been established in their backyard. The CEO of Wil Pharma attempts to reassure the good citizens of Harvardville that there is no way something of the scale of what occurred in Raccoon City could happen at the Wil Pharma facility but naturally they are not reassured by this. Especially in the wake of continued bio terror incidents occurring world wide, the most recent of them being in India near a Wil Pharma facility, and the fact that a Central Asian military strong man, General Miguel Grande is making threatening noises isn’t helping things either.
So into this climate we see Claire Redfield working for the NGO Terra Save, a group that is dedicated to maintaining some kind of oversight on various pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms and holding them accountable for when things go awry, arriving at the Harvardville airport. She obviously thinks that what she is doing is just going about her work of trying to make the world a safer place, another day at the office so to speak, she has no idea of what is going to happen in the next few moments. Neither does Senator Ron Davis, the guy who helped Wil Pharma set up its facility in quaint little Harvardville – which has exactly the same population as the now deceased Raccoon City, 100,000 inhabitants.
Thus the stage becomes set for the carnage, chaos and tragedy that is about to unfold. Interestingly all is not is as it seems with this storyline, the sudden outbreak of a terrible and potentially catastrophic biohazard is not as cut and dry as it would seem. Bioterrorism is mentioned and it’s this distinct possibility that has seen both the deployment of special agent Leon S Kennedy and the US Marines into the situation to work out what is going on. This time though there is a vaccine and these new arrivals have all been inoculated against the effects of the T virus, preventing a potential disaster of cataclysmic proportions.
This film is everything that Appleseed Ex Machina was hyped up to be but quite frankly failed to deliver. Resident Evil: Degeneration has a nice tight story, loads of action, carnage, pathos, romance and intrigue to satisfy even the most jaded action/anime film fan. Is this the future of anime? Time will tell, but if Sony and CAPCOM keep coming up with tight finely crafted features such as this then the future looks bright for CGI films. Will this be the death knell for more traditional forms of anime? Hard to say, but frankly I feel that the traditional formats will keep on keeping on as long as various studios such as Studio Ghibli, Studio Pierrot, Madhouse et al keep on producing fine quality works as they have done throughout the years.
But getting back to Resident Evil: Degeneration, frankly its worthwhile forking out the readies and renting from your local video store. Currently its on the new release list but worth the price, keep an eye out for the blooper section it’s a real hoot – especially when one of the characters is going on about how low her fee is for the movie and bitching about how she can renegotiate…very amusing.
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