Following two installments that were unable to succeed in their attempts at providing a movie’s worth of intense action, Resident Evil: Extinction raises the average quality of the franchise, but it still has a lot of flaws. By this point, the problem with the Resident Evil films has been that they are heavily action-based, but the action itself has not been fun or creative. It was at times dull. It was at other times too frenetically edited to appreciate. Here the action is more fun and is better filmed -- which is vital considering it is the movie’s only merit -- but too much of the film is so nonsensical that it's impossible to take any of it seriously.

In Resident Evil and Resident Evil: Apocalypse, a genetically modified woman with phenomenal fighting abilities, Alice, fought to escape the wrath of the Umbrella Corporation, a company that manufactured a deadly virus for military purposes and which had such poor hazard containment procedures that a single broken vial ended up zombifying nearly every human being on the planet. Apparently Alice’s blood holds the key to reversing the virus’s effects. This interests the Umbrella Corp. not because they want to make the world a more pleasant place but because the zombies, if freed from their primordial instincts, would make a great workforce. What good a workforce of billions is when there are only hundreds, maybe thousands, of people left on Earth, I do not know. Now Alice wants to bring Umbrella down while helping a band of survivors continue to survive in the wasteland that used to be America. Oh yeah, and she also has telekinetic powers now.

As he does in the two preceding films, writer Paul W.S. Anderson forgoes the exploration of a wealth of potentially interesting plot points in order to remain focused on the action. In this installment, that approach pays off more than in the others. Director Russell Mulcahy, in his first shot at Resident Evil, demonstrates that action is much more entertaining when you can tell what is going on. Instead of constantly jumping among cuts of feet, fists, weapons, and bad guys flying across the screen, Mulcahy shoots the action with patience, displaying the characters’ moves and tactics in a mostly understandable way. When we see Alice doing sideways flying kicks, spinning through the air as she jumps clear over attacking zombies, and using twin machetes to dispatch those zombies, it doesn’t matter how interesting the story is. The action is self-sustaining. Add to this clearly-depicted action her recently-developed psionic abilities, which lead to such events as the manipulation of fire itself, and you’ve got some fun moments.

There is a downside to this approach, however. When you’re so confident in the spectacle of the on-screen events that you take the more difficult route of making sure viewers can see everything clearly, you really have to make sure it’s all as good as you want it to be. There are a number of scenes where I’m sure the filmmakers were hoping to create images in which the cool factor outweighed the stupidity of the actions, but the scales remain tipped toward stupidity. Case in point: During one scene in which the main characters’ caravan is attacked by a massive swarm of zombie crows, the characters run around firing handguns at them. When I say “massive swarm,” I mean the sky is nearly blackened by these things. And the characters don’t even appear to be firing out of desperation. One character in particular firmly holds his ground and fires at them decisively with a gun in each hand. Talk about exercises in futility. With the camera so proudly displaying these scenes, they come across as laughably absurd.

And yet, there are some aspects of the movie that just don’t make sense. Why does the head of Umbrella wear sunglasses all the time, for instance? He lives every day in an underground bunker. Is he trying to be a stereotype? The nonsensical qualities of the film are also perpetuated by scenes of great dramatic coincidence. At one point, the main characters encounter a cargo container in the desert. They walk up to it, preparing to tow it out of their way, and suddenly the end of it just falls open for no reason. Then, after a dramatic pause, a couple dozen zombies come running out from the back of it (too far back to have been responsible for opening the end). Why did it happen to fall open right then after sitting their undisturbed for a time that could range from days to years? When scenes play out that are obviously manufactured to try to heighten the movie’s drama or excitement, they distract from whatever natural tension already existed. Instead of witnessing events that are inherently intense, we are made consciously aware that a filmmaker is behind it all, trying with purpose to pull a reaction out of us. Such techniques detract from the experience.

Anderson combats the movie’s flaws to some extent by retaining a virtue of the previous Resident Evil films: he’s not afraid to kill important characters. There is a surprising number of instances in which Anderson kills characters that, based on action film convention, we would not have expected to die. Since these deaths make it clear that few, if any, characters are shielded by the writer’s pen, we have consistent cause to worry about who will make it out alive during each encounter with the enemy. Since Extinction is primarily based on spectacle and not its story and characters, these deaths carry little emotional weight, but they do keep the action interesting and, at times, surprising. It's not enough to make up for the problems, but it helps.

At Resident Evil: Extinction, the Resident Evil film franchise has improved with each installment. However, the franchise did not get off to a good start, and there is plenty to improve upon still. For a film that has no higher aspirations than mindless action, though, it performs adequately. It is held down at times by its stand-out flaws, but it also gives us Milla Jovovich pulling off crazy moves and killing off zombies by the handful -- and this time we get to see her do it.