The Best Action Film Ever Made

Rating: 10/10 (1 January 2010)

Most people will tell you the best action movie of all time is either Raiders of the Lost Ark or Die Hard. Both good. But Aliens has a striking maturity to it, due mostly to Sigourney Weaver's performance and the gritty, military environment.
Aliens will always be one of my all-time favorite films. The first film introduced us to the alien species, and features excellent direction by Ridley Scott, but THIS is the film that really established this universe, its technology, and who Ripley is, and it's THIS film that all the other Alien sequels have been compared to. James Cameron, who has proved himself a great director and science-fiction writer, took what Scott created and made his own epic.
It's hard to explain why Aliens is loved by so many. It has a strong human element, brought about by the Ripley-Newt relationship. Most action movies try to tack on love stories, that usually feel clichéd. The mother-daughter angle was a surprisingly nice touch, yet it is done without being overly sentimental or hokey. Carrie Henn gives a fine performance, while Sigourney fully deserved her Best Actress nomination.
The visual effects are so good that you often are unaware of them. It was not until recently checking out the DVD features that I realized many of the "sets" are actually miniatures. The score by James Horner (despite the off-screen tension between Horner and Cameron) is one of his best. The Sulaco is a beauty to look at, as is much of background of this film. The supporting characters really establish a family of marines. Part of the reason this film holds up to repeat viewings is how colorful each character is, even the ones that die early in the film like Apone and Frost. The humans are truly the focus of the film, not the aliens. In fact, it is over an hour before the aliens even first appear.
But for anyone who complains this pacing is too slow, don't worry, you'll get your money's worth of action in the last 40 minutes. The tension in the final sequence when the Queen Alien is first introduced always raises my blood pressure. This would be the peak of the series.
The only real criticism I've ever had of the movie is that the title is a bit plain and generic. Every time I say "I love the movie Aliens" I feel a little silly, and I usually have to clarify by adding "you know, the James Cameron movie" so the other person knows what I mean.
Well, rest assured, Aliens (you know, the James Cameron movie) is actually excellent film-making with an iconic and complex heroine, and one of its kind: a war movie in outer space.