Moving but flawed third movie (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2003)

The third entry into the "Alien" series is not quite as bad as many have many have made out. As hinted by the title, the film returns to the original's central idea of a single creature against a team of motley humans. New director David Fincher has created an atmospheric and ultimately quite moving ending to what was thought to be a trilogy at the time. However, the film does not expand on the themes of the first two and leaves quite a few gaping holes in it's plot.
The opening sequence (which uncomfortably jumbles the opening credits in with the action) Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her fellow survivors from "Aliens" forced to crash-land on prison planet after an alien egg and incumbent face-hugger sets fire to their ship. Ripley awakes to find she is, yet again, the sole survivor in the most unfriendly company of the prisoners. The face-hugger also survives and impregnates a prisoner's pet dog. Before long, a new alien is born and proceeds to decimate the prisoners. As well this, Ripley discovers that she, too, is carrying an alien inside her....
The story for this one is not terrible, as it maintains momentum and keeps the viewer interested, but on reflection leaves one or two unanswered questions. It is never sufficiently explained how the alien egg got on board the ship, and how the same face-hugger could infect both Ripley and the prisoner's dog is never explained at all. Some plot strands, such as what happens to demented prisoner Golic (Paul McGann), are left unexplored (like all the films so far, inclusion of deleted material could have helped this alot.) The greatest victim of the plot is, ironically, the alien of the title. The first two films took great care in creating a creature whose motivation for killing people was to reproduce. All of that is thrown out of the window here, the alien reduced to a mere killing machine that randomly attacks anyone and everyone (except the impregnated Ripley) with no rhyme or reason to its actions.
In spite of this inherent flaws, the script does deliver a strong main thread with Ripley's conflict with the creature, her pregnancy giving her situation a strangely ambiguous twist that is resolved in the film's moving finale. There are also quite a few distinctive characters amongst a cast of mainly cardboard cut-outs.
Weaver maintains a strong lead as Ripley and she is in the fine company of the mainly British actors playing the prisoners. Charles Dance is excellent as the prison's doctor, forming a touching if brief romance with Ripley. The late Brian Glover is well-cast as the surly supervisor, and Ralph Brown is also good as his simpleton assistant. Charles S. Dutton makes a striking impression as Dillon, a prisoner who has used religion as a means to guide both himself and his fellow inmates.
As with "Alien", the set design here is superb. While the prison environment (including, among other things, an ore refinery) is too expansive to be claustrophic, it looks great with its shades of brown, black and red creating the right feel of griminess and imminent doom.
While Fincher doesn't quite have Cameron's touch with the action scenes, there are some good set-pieces in the prison's tunnels as well as the finale in the refinery.
Overall, a good if slightly muddled effort that would have made a good ending to this series of films.