Cool and daft - it's enormous fun!

Rating: 8/10 (30 September 2004)

Sometimes it's really good to see a flashy, violent, fun movie where you just don't need to think.
AVP starts economically, with a quick zip round the world recruiting dashing scientists (shades of MI2 and the LXG), sticks them on the Piper Maru (X-Files?) icebreaker, and send them off to a newly discovered pyramid under the Antarctic ice (with CGI 3D floorplan only slightly altered from Resident Evil 1).
Don't forget to break off for regular adolescent fanboy 'guns & ammo' shots - guns into holsters, cartridges clicked into chambers, blades extending, straps strapped, zips zipped etc. After all, it breaks up the obvious dialogue where people essentially deny they're all going to die, and who could possibly be out here anyway..
I really liked the Predator ship shots, and the 'hunters are coming' moments.
Anyhoo, the whole setup is pretty efficient (great to see Lance Henriksen back), and although you immediately guess who's going to survive, I think we've got deaths within about 20 minutes.
From then on, it's all over-blown portents and Cube-style morphing rooms, with the dumb humans trapped between the Predators and the Aliens (both of which do look really cool - and I was particularly pleased that when the two of them 'get it on', the fight is good and brutal - playing properly to their strengths & weaknesses).
So it goes - there's a flashback which might have been more fun as a longer sequence, but I enjoyed the attempt to wrap it all up in legend & mythology - and then the boss fight at the end, which - although it has a few cheesy moments - is also pretty good.
I can't mention the corniest moments in the film, but you'll know them when it happens - and there are a few gaps in its own story logic, but nothing you can't ignore. Something else I was also pleased with is how potentially annoying characters are swiftly dispensed with.
The almost-end was a bit too "Predator 2" for me, followed by an obvious (but good) final shot at the very end. And then there's plenty to talk about with your mates afterwards as you discuss the coolest (and daftest) moments of AVP on the way home. What more could you want from this film?
Well, actually I wanted a more serious mix of chills & ambiguity - more Alien (1) vs Predator (1) - but what we get it a mix of Aliens (2) and Predator (2), which is fine by me.
And yes, it is much better than Freddy vs Jason (although FvsJ was acceptable).
Final thought: that it would have been hilarious (given the timeline) to have had a cameo - maybe a warning message, or at least something - from Arnie (following his own rumble in the jungle, which would have been about a decade earlier). But I appreciated the nod to 'Bishop' all the same.