Good, But Not Good Enough

Rating: 7/10 (21 August 2004)

Stuff blows up, people get stabbed, great big setpieces fall down. If this is all you require for an action movie, thumbs up, go to it, have fun. It's rated PG-13, but don't let that dissuade you. Your mind is already made up.
For the rest of you (and me), not so much. The reason the first half of each franchise (Predator 1, Alien, Aliens) was/were so successful was not just because of the violence, body count, or cool-lookin' bad guy, but because they were pitted against humans we cared about. We spent time with them, we got to see them in action, and that made it all the more horrifying when they're offed, one at a time. We're supposed to be rooting for the humans.
This movie, like 'Freddy vs. Jason' before it, is made SOLELY for us to pick our favorite bad guy, and root for THEM, humans be damned. Oddly, even "FvJ" had some character development. In this one, we meet TWO whole characters in the initial set-up, and the carnage begins almost immediately. I don't care about the people, and now they're gone, and now I'm bored.
It's remarkably similar to Paul W.S. Anderson's earlier movies-- we don't count "Mortal Kombat" because he didn't write it, and we don't count "Soldier" because it sucked. The shots of the holographic underground complex, the rag-tag recruits, even Colin Salmon's death. Not only has it been done before and better, it's been done before and better BY ANDERSON.
The ending is pretty nice (if a little obvious), but getting there isn't really worth it, when only half the cast has any lines at all, and only half of them say something beyond "Help Me!" There's room for improvement, but somewhere in this 90-minute PG-13 C+ of a movie, there's a 120-minute R-rated A+, screaming to get out.