Life will always be compared to the movie Alien and is it coincidence that the new Alien movie Alien: Covenant is out soon? It was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernich, who were responsible for the movie Deadpool last year. Just don’t expect the humour that was in Deadpool to be in this movie.
Six astronauts/scientists are on board the international space station to study dirt samples they have received from Mars. A microscopic life form is discovered and with the scientist help, starts growing. Naturally things don’t go to well from here. As one character said of the creature “It doesn’t hate us, it just needs to kill us to survive”. Unfortunately the creature is given the named “Calvin” which is probably the worst name for an alien in the history of Sci Fi movies. Luckily the movie rises above the name of the creature.
Although the headline actors are Jake Gyenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, full credit to the director for giving all six actors equal screen time during the movie. All six perform beautifully with not one actor outshining the rest. Most films of this calibre focus on just one or two actors, making it easy to work out who will survive. Not so with film.
Unfortunately there is only so much that you can do with an “alien on a space ship” movie. You know the alien is going to find new ways of killing the astronauts one by one and in the end only one will remain. What Life does to this usual scenario is change it where it can and in the end, an ending I didn’t see coming, well at least until a minute before it ended.
Despite the Alien comparisons, Life is still a fun, exciting movie to see. At 103 minutes, it does not out stay its welcome. Not one for the squeamish, but it will satisfy all the die-hard Alien fans awaiting the new movie. Naturally it sets itself up for a possible sequel, but I have my doubts it will happen.
Review by Geoff Jenke
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