The Resident Evil movies may not be the most intellectually stimulating series of films to ever hit the silver screen but what they do, they do well. Based on the video game series of the same name, they stick to a pretty standard but completely reliable formula and that is "hot chick fights people/zombies and stuff blows up." What have the filmmakers done to differentiate this third entry from the two that came before it? Not much, truth be told. This time most of the action takes place in a desert.

For those concerned with things like plot and continuity, we learn that the plague that caused so many problems in the first two movies has spread out of Raccoon City and pretty much turned all of the Earth's population into zombies. The planet itself has also died and the Earth is now more or less a desert. Alice (the lovely Milla Jovavich reprising the role for the third time) has spent the last little while wandering the Earth all by her lonesome trying to avoid detection and capture by the sinister Umbrella Corporation. The powers that Alice showed in the first two films are starting to become considerably more powerful and Dr. Isaac (Iain Glenn) will stop at nothing to bring her in.

Meanwhile, a rag-tag group of survivors have formed a convoy that travels around from town to town scavenging for food, weapons and gasoline to stay alive in hopes of finding somewhere they can settle down without having to worry about the zombie menace. When they're attacked by a massive horde of zombie birds (infected from eating the flesh of the dead) Alice shows up to save the day. She joins up with the three top members of the convoy: Claire Redfield (Ali Larter), a former U.B.C.S. agent named Carlos Olivera (Oded Fehr) and L.J. (Mike Epps). Together they hope to make it to Alaska where they've heard there may be a safe haven from the zombies.

Unfortunately for everyone, Umbrella finds Alice and sends in a team to get her in what is left of Las Vegas and in the ensuing chaos, Isaacs is bitten by one of the undead. While all of this has been going on, Dr. Isaac has been creating clones of Alice in hopes of using her blood to develop a cure for the virus. Isaacs injects himself with what he believes to be an antidote but it has adverse effects and Alice finds herself having to showdown with him or pay the ultimate price.

First things first - if you aren't familiar with the events from the first two films, this third entry isn't likely to make a whole lot of sense. There's very little character development here and all we get as far as the back-story is concerned is a brief narrated intro that sets up the rest of the film. That said, if you have seen the first two movies and are reasonably familiar with their plots, you shouldn't have too much trouble following this film. Don't go trying to read too much into things, there's little here in the way of an actual continuation of the storyline - it's all glossed over fairly quickly in order to get us straight to the action. How does it fare on that level? Reasonably well. Yes, it's definitely a bit of a cliché at this point in the game to play with 'bullet time' every time a fight breaks out but the battles between the living and the undead in the film are pretty intense even if a little too much shaky-cam action proves distracting. Milla look great flying around and slashing at everything in sight and the film delivers a bit more splatter than you might expect. The zombies look pretty good here, the make up is quite effective, though seeing them change from the slow, lumbering Romero-esque zombies in the first picture to the fast-moving attack zombies in this new one (think 28 Days Later and you're on the right track) is a bit of a disappointment even if the influences of The Road Warrior work their way into the movie quite effectively.

Setting the action in the desert is an interesting stylistic choice as it makes an otherwise vacant movie stand out a little bit. The sets and miniatures used to show us what has happened to the Las Vegas strip are inspired and impressive and some of the cinematography is creative. Don't go looking for much out of the performers, however. Everyone plays it pretty much by the numbers here and while Milla is good in the lead, she doesn't do anything with the part that we haven't seen before in the two films prior. Don't go into this one looking for great acting or a complex story, instead go in looking for a pretty woman slaughtering zombies - that way you won't be disappointed. If you enjoyed the first two, this is more of the same... in the desert... with... zombie birds.

Video:

Sony's 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer for Resident Evil: Extinction looks fantastic. Color reproduction is great and there's plenty of detail present in both the foreground and the background of the picture. Some shots look a little filtered but this is likely due to the way in which the film was shot rather than the transfer itself. Black levels stay strong and there are no compression artifacts to complain about even if some mild edge enhancement shows up in a couple of scenes. Flesh tones are lifelike and natural looking and there are no problems with heavy aliasing or shimmering.