Ridley Scott's classic Sci-Fi/Horror film, or Horror Sci-Fi film stands as one of highlights of both these genre's and the golden decade that was the 1970's. At times the inability to clearly state which of the two genre's dominates the film, is to the credit of both Scott and writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shussett, who seemingly chose to use the strengths of both genre's without any of the weaknesses. An example of this is that went with fully developing their characters, something common within Sci-Fi, but something rarely seen in the Horror genre.
The plot of Alien follows the crew of the Nostromo as they return in the gargantuan ship from a mining job(I believe, it is never fully stated). However they are woken up before they get to earth, after the ship, controlled by the computer known as "Mother" picks up an SOS signal. Landing on the now legendary LV426, they crew explore the remains of the ship, and inadvertently bring something back.
The performances within Alien are all superb, from the smaller roles of Dallas and Kane, up to the unsettling Ash and iconic Ripley. The performance of Ripley is perfect, as Sigourney Weaver nails each note of Ripley's frantic emotional and physical jounrey in her attempt for survival, undoubtedly the performance that launched a Sci-Fi legend. Also, John Hurt's table scene performance can't be left out, it was so good, it apparently shocked the rest of the cast.
The weaknesses of Alien are small and for the most part not worth mentioning, the only consistent one mentioned is that it takes too long for stuff to start happening, or "for people to start dying", this for me is a sign of no patience and not being interested in the characters, if people ever use this criticism, I recommend quickly showing them towards the current wave of gore films. In fact, it could be argued that this apparent weakness is actually Alien's greatest strength, it is patient and is willing to add and depth and explore it's characters.
Verdict: *****(5 out of 5)
