Resident Evil movie in a nutshell

Fans of the Resident Evil games may be less than enamored of their tranlation to the big-screen, but the series has been one of the most popular girls-with-guns franchises of the past decade. It has spawned two sequels, which is a damn sight more than most video-game films [or, indeed, action heroines] managed. Been a while since I watched the original, but if you have, you’ll likely get a kick out of this month’s Youtube offering, which condenses the entire movie into less than three minutes.

Chocolate trailer

This is the trailer for Chocolate, from Prachya Pinkaew, director of Ong-bak and The Protector, which made a super-star of Tony Jaa. It’s about an autistic girl who picks up martial-arts skills from TV and their next-door neighbours, a muay thai academy. She uses those skills to collect debts on behalf of her ill mother, which incurs the wrath of both local and Japanese gangs. As with Pinkaew’s earlier films, there is no wire-work or CGI – it’s all raw, athletic ability, and based on this trailer alone (or even the painful out-takes), it could be the best action heroine film of 2008. The Thai release is February 8.