Great!

Rating: 10/10 (29 May 2002)

"Alien 3" is in my opinion, the only film in the series with a personal touch (those having seen Fincher's subsequent work know what I'm talking about). The emphasis is not on the creature, but on the penitentiary environment and on a skinhead Ripley, sibling and skeleton-like reflection of the alien. She's more a victim than a heroine - this might have been the reason for the film not to be such a hit as the second installment of the series.
The hopeless aspect of the refinery standing for the underground condition and inner emptiness of the lifers - rallied into a battle for survival, as well as the omnipresence of isolation and contamination are well defined motifs reaching high levels by insisting on gros plans and on dark colours, broken here and there by incandescent outbreaks. They should have insisted more on the religious aspect, implying damnation, expiation, sacrifice and transcendence. Sombre, dark, eerie and cerebral, "Alien 3" is an original sci-fi, providing an amazing score (bravo, Elliot Goldenthal!), a fit cinematography and a careful editing, brought somehow close to perfection. The only minus is the special effects department which could have gotten more than that out of Giger's new designs.