ALIEN VS. PREDATOR

It is the mark by which the faithful shall know one another ... If you hear an argument about who'd win in a battle between Superman vs. Batman, Darth Vader vs. Ming the Merciless, Dracula vs. the Wolfman, you know you are listening to dueling genre geeks. If you listen to or, better yet, participate in one of these arguments with affection and passion (as this reviewer does), you are part of the target audience for ALIEN VS. PREDATOR.

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, or AVP as it's known for short, brings together the title creatures from the four-movie ALIEN series and the two-film PREDATOR mythos, which have previously been blended in novels, comic books and a videogame. AVP wasn't screened for reviewers, which is usually not a good sign. As it turns out, while AVP is not the greatest horror movie match-up ever or even recently FREDDY VS. JASON is arguably the current reigning Best of Breed it's not something that requires active avoidance, either.

In late 2004, the Weyland Corporation (the folks who, as we've seen in the other ALIEN movies, will in future have the bright idea of sending uninformed humans to capture aliens for industrial use, with repeatedly catastrophic results) sees a heat signature beneath the Antarctic ice. Scans reveal, of all things, a pyramid 2,000 feet under the surface. Weyland chieftain Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) assembles a team of experts to explore the anomaly. Wouldn't you know, the unfortunate explorers have stumbled into an extraterrestrial conflict between two species, one more hostile than the other.

There are a number of complaints that can be leveled at both director Paul W.S. Anderson's script (from a story credited to him and original ALIEN creators Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett) which has a number of wait-a-minute-why ...? elements and his pacing, which starts to bog down in unnecessary set-up. Additionally, it's geographically confusing the pyramid keeps reconfiguring itself, which doesn't have a useful plot purpose (the human characters are in deep trouble, we get it, no need to complicate things further) and only makes us wonder where the heck everybody is now. However, when the movie gets to its title bouts and we see Aliens and Predators thrashing and gashing at one another in fluid, ferocious movement, the movie delivers the goods. It's possible (actually likely) that budgetary constraints rather than creative considerations prevented the film's balance from being devoted to more of these creature clashes, but they are pretty cool when they occur.

Although the cast have very underwritten roles, they jump into the material with gusto. Sanaa Lathan puts across the appropriate mixture of terror and toughness as the lead and Ewen Bremner as a Scottish scientist brings so much humor and human warmth to his performance that we wish he had a larger role. Henriksen, who played an android in several of the previous films (the implication here is that the android was designed to look like the AVP character) has dignity and restraint. The creatures, executed here by Amalgamated Dynamics Inc., from the original designs by H.R. Giger and Stan Winston, look just great.

As there was no press screening, this reviewer attended the 7:30 PM show at the Crest Theatre in Westwood. Southern California readers may want to consider seeing genre movies at this venue one of the few independent (non-chain) movie houses in the area, the Crest uses the numbers on ticket stubs to raffle off items related to what's on screen, in this instance, several AVP t-shirts and a nice-sized Alien action figure. This ritual sent a few viewers home with unexpected loot and put the whole audience in a cheerfully participatory frame of mind.

Could ALIEN VS. PREDATOR have been a lot better? Sure. Is it acceptable monster fun anyway? Sure again.