Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is the second movie ripped off from the best-selling video game which in turn was ripped off from separate Reagan-era monster-movie franchises. That's not necessarily a bad thing; an effective B-movie doesn't have to be original, just well-crafted. 2004's AVP: Alien vs. Predator, for instance, was proficient sci-fi/action snack food, nothing more or less. Requiem, by comparison, is a plate of nachos left too long in the microwave.

The problems with the movie are twofold and easy to spot: The acting stinks and you can't understand what's going on. Set in picturesque Crested Butte, Colo. (played by locations in British Columbia), the film kicks off with a Predator spaceship crash-landing on earth with a cargo of Alien lab specimens. As the critters fan out into the Colorado rainforest and begin their face-hugging, chest-cavity-incubating ways, a dreadlocked Predator blasts off from his home planet to clean up the mess.

Your inner fan-boy may be interested; mine was. Shane Salerno's screenplay, unfortunately, plunks us down with a bunch of locals out of the U.S. government's Daytime Soap Relocation program. Prodigal bad boy Dallas (Steven Pasquale of TV's Rescue Me), his lovelorn kid brother (Johnny Lewis), the lissome blonde he pines for (Kristen Hager), the beleaguered town sheriff (John Ortiz) - these are screenplay-software templates, not characters. A tough-mama Iraq War vet (Reiko Aylesworth), on the other hand, brings back fond memories of Jenette Goldstein's Private Vasquez in 1986's Aliens.

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This article was published December 31, 2007 at 10:44 a.m.

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