If only ...

Rating: 6/10 (18 December 2014)

The great sadness of Alien 3, and a point missed in the previous review, is that David Fincher was the RIGHT man for the job.
This film had the potential to match the original in mood, tension and impact. A great script, a solid cast, a stellar, Wunderkind of a director. What it did not have was a studio with the heart and the balls to see the project through.
Fincher has proved himself time and again since Alien 3. The film he could have made was hinted at in Panic Room. Weaver and Dance do their best, delivering gritty performances. The soupcon of romance eked out of the lice-infested grime of Fury is fragile and fleeting, yet shows where this film may have gone had Fox not pulled the plug. Fincher's bravery, drowning Cameron's darlings in the opening seconds, is breath-taking.
Instead, with budget panic rising, the bean-counters sent in the heavy mob. Fincher's baby was wrestled from him, sliced, diced and stapled together to deliver the confused, nonsensical mishmash we see today. Fincher, brutally scarred, has vowed never to revisit the piece, so no Director's cut for us. Instead, we have a re-hashed hybrid of out-takes and re-assembled footage in the most recent Blu Ray compendium.
The back-screen/ FX shots are dated, the mainly British B-list cast hammy and, it seems, having a whale of a time. Brian Glover gives an untypically less-than-convincing performance, which adds to the feeling that this was made by a bunch of acting school mates at the end of term.
Oh how I would love to have seen the film this might have been.