Action movie par excellence

Rating: 10/10 (28 January 2000)

This is one of my top ten movies of all time, no problem. After the disturbing and almost as excellent original, here comes the rarest of things - the superior sequel and best of the quadrilogy!! Cameron wisely decides to not retrace the steps of Ridley Scott and goes for adrenaline-pumped action mixed with visceral tension, even more tense than Alien...just think of the motion tracker bleeping as the aliens get closer...genius! This is one of those movies you never want to end and I must have watched it 20 times at least. If you found the Alien concept from the original film interesting, you'll absolutely love this. No real flaws as far as I can think of...it's very long (I watched the Director's Cut) but the time flies by and I never really got bored - the strong storyline, wonderfully diverse characters and strong performances (especially from Weaver, Biehn and Henn) see to that. Unlike in Titanic, Cameron gets the dialogue exactly right here, especially with the rousing one-liners for the marines that have been shamelessly copied ever since. Finally, the soundtrack is utterly brilliant - pulsating in the action sequences and suitably eerie in those tense ones. Classic from start to finish and from back to front.