a vicious, sometimes over the top, exciting and suspenseful and violent horror movie

Rating: 7/10 (20 May 2017)

There's a moment where the robot Walter, played by Michael Fassbender, meets the other robot, David (also, surprise, Michael Fassbender, fresh off of a hair-cut to make himself look not so Iggy Pop like), who has been on this planet for ten years, interact with one another. David has one of those flute-recorder things, and shows Walter how to use it. Walter is able to use it with a moment of practice, and David points out to his robot-other-same man that he can't *create* any music naturally. David can, though he's not as advanced as Walter is after some years of modifications (David was the first synthetic life form, as one could see in the 2012 precursor to this, Prometheus), and it's a wonderful little scene. It may actually be the best sort of sci-fi philosophical scene that either of these films tried to do as far as addressing in a subtle but direct enough way how the deeper ideas Scott and his writers are trafficking in. If only those ideas worked stronger and weren't so BLATANTLY stated as happens in the 2nd half of this movie.
But what am I starting this off with - Alien: Covenant, the sixth proper Alien movie (don't count the Predator ones for now), is Scott taking another stab at this franchise after getting both praise and (probably more-so I think) criticism for trying something different with Prometheus. It didn't work, though not all his fault (but then again we usually blame the director if he can't reign in the unwiedly/stupid elements of the script, and Prometheus is a stupid man's idea of a "smart" science fiction film, albeit beautifully shot). So here I think Scott's thought is, 'alright, if you want blood... you got it, f*** it, I give up.' In the process he actually creates his most suspenseful film (not counting, say, The Martian, which is a different sort of suspense I mean) as far as action goes since American Gangster or even Black Hawk Down; his cinema here and set pieces are visceral and exciting and terrifying.
He and his writers may have a climax too many, though, with the exception of a denouement "twist" that should be obvious but isn't and that makes it all the more frustrating for me once it's revealed (it involves Fassbender, that's all I'll say, or one of them), those climaxes are fun as hell and shot with style and... yes, some schlock, but a healthy dose. When Katherine Waterson is flying nearly off of the ship hanging on for dear life on what is practically a thread as she is trying to shoot away a rascally Xenomorph off of the escape pod that Danny McBride is flying... I mean, does it totally make sense? No, but it's gripping in a way I didn't expect. And I think there's some smarter things going on in the script or, to put it another way, not as many noticeably dumb things to comment upon or take one out of the film.
Are there some plot holes? Sure; one involves the basic idea of the planet that Billy Crudup decides to go to - not so much the 'hey, let's go, there's a better chance of life that isn't years away', which is the original plan, but because, well, why didn't this pop up before when the team was doing the vetting for the other planet in the first place? Did it not show up on the map? I also take issue with something that happens with Damian Bechir's character and an attack that occurs to him - it should go one way or the other involving an alien presence on him, and either way has a logic issue, though one more than the other - and a particularly WTF obvious slasher movie moment involving a couple taking a shower (you know it from the trailer) that took me out of the movie. It made me laugh, and I don't think that was Scott's intention, but it seemed as if whether he recognized it or not he was fully going for the slasher movie tropes... which he already is here anyway, but in that scene, my God.
But the performances are all uniformly good for what's asked, and Waterson, Fassbender and McBride are all putting in above-average or fully excellent work here (Fassbender, whatever loaded lines about Oxymandias he has to say, makes it so convincing I almost want to give the problems I have in the second half a pass), and it helps that Waterson gets to make her character like but not like a "Ripley" protagonist; we know she's the tough woman, but she also gets to be vulnerable and upset and so on (James Franco has an odd cameo as... well, I'll leave that for you to discover), and it's always great to see her putting so much into this character. And Scott is still there making things look wonderful with his DP Dariusz Wolski. Alien: Covenant is a step in the right direction from Prometheus as far as not having so many glaringly dumb or inane or questionable moments in the story or logic of events, even if it has its own set of issues (not to mention, I should say, a flashback to what happened to a city of engineers that, for me, should've been cut out as to leave more mystery - wouldn't it let the audience have a little fun/do the work halfway of wondering what happened to those charred bodies without having to see it?)