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I have the worst habit of just letting movies sit right in front of my TV forever when I get them in the mail. God knows how long I had the Harry Potter DVDs looking me in the face every morning. I finally decided to get it together and send in the movies and hope to receive something worthwhile of my viewing time. So much for that dream. I viewed Resident Evil: Extinction, War, and Eastern Promises.

Let’s start with easily the worst use of a studio’s money, Resident Evil: Extinction. Why do they keep doing this? The production values are horrible, the acting is still atrocious, and it reeks of B movie status. Maybe Paul W.S. Anderson should go all the way with the next film and at least wallow in the low budget feel and go all out with it. Not in the same sense as Grindhouse, but possibly up the amount of blood, boobs, and cheesy one-liners. I really don’t need to say much about this. Plot is horrible (Alice acquires psionic abilities, Umbrella still does the most illogical things with the T Virus, and a bunch of people get killed in ridiculous ways) and it’s a Resident Evil movie, what else do you want?

Next is War. This was easily the biggest disappointment of the weekend. I should have lowered my expectations before I put the Blu-Ray in but call me a sucker for action movie mash ups. This film was directed by Phillip Atwell, who was a former music video director. You may remember his work in Eminem’s “Ass Like That” and “Guilty Conscience.” Anyway, the plot of this movie was to tell a well structured epic tale of a cop who’s partner was killed after a bust and he has to avenge his partner’s honor…No, the marketing team just needed two big names to throw together and beat each other up. Too bad there’s not much of that. By the time you make it to the showdown between Jason Statham and Jet Li, it is extremely anticlimactic. Here’s an idea, if you market a movie as this awesome kick ass rumble between two first-class action stars, how about making their battle the most important and amazing struggle of the film, not some throwaway.

I ended the misery with Eastern Promises. This was a good film, but it did kind of let me down a little.The other film that I knew the director from (David Cronenberg) was A History of Violence. With that pedigree, I had high expectations. The movie begins with an assassination scene where a male adolescent slits the throat of a man in a barber chair and you see the victim gasping for air as blood showers out of his neck. It set me up for what I thought the film would be. Meanwhile a story is woven about a pregnant prostitute who died while giving birth to a girl. Anna, the hospital worker who helped deliver the child finds a diary from the prostitute (which is all in Russian) and wants to find out what is in the diary in hopes of finding the child a home. In the search for the contents of the diary, Anna uncovers some information that others may not want to see the light of day. Not to go too far into the plot, it does tell an engaging story and the characters all have their own struggles which does make the movie interesting, despite the scarce amount of action. I would definitely recommend this movie if you are into story driven thrillers. If you are looking for an experience similar to A History of Violence, it might not be for you.

Resident Evil: Extinction (2 Stars out of 5)
War (2 Stars out of 5)
Eastern Promises (3 Stars out of 5)