Action Packed

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2006)

"Aliens" is truly one of the best action movies around, it's got all you could possibly demand from the genre and then some.
First off the characters are all given depth and substance, they're not just walking stereotypes but believable in a way that few actioners succeed. Burke is greedy but you can see his hesitance towards what he's doing, Bishop is an android but isn't all statistics over a mechanical voice-they all act like real people.
The character development naturally gives a more personal and affecting tone to the horrible things they go through which brings me to another successful element of the movie: the plot. While not overtly complex the story has a way of slowly unfolding new layers of terror upon these marines until it drowns them in the surrounding horror, leaving them no obvious escape.
The monsters of the title also make for some frightening opposition either slowly climbing through ventilation shafts or going on unstoppable all out assaults, their humanized intelligence and organization only compounding on the unescapable situation of these men and women.
In short here is an action film that never loses its pace, sets an awesomely tense atmosphere, gives you plenty of juicy characters to feast on plus great monsters and action sequences around every corner to keep you more than satisfied. Indeed Cameron never bettered this one.