Starring: Sanaa Lathan, Lance Henriksen, Raoul Bova, Ewen Bremner

4 out of 10

Railing about the fact that Alien Vs. Predator isn't much of a movie is tantamount to complaining the pro wrestling isn't much of a sport. Both endeavors seek short-term thrills that are supposed to substitute for quality and actual achievement and both provide precisely that, briefly, and nothing more.

Director Paul W.S. Anderson, who made his first big splash with a movie based upon a video game, Mortal Kombat (a film I admit is a guilty pleasure), returns to those stomping grounds—as "Alien vs. Predator" was also a popular video game--but with less stellar results.

The plot of Alien Vs. Predator is as simple as a Texas style cage match. A group of scientists and archeologists are sent to investigate a pyramid found underneath the ice of the Antarctic shelf. Upon further inspection (they have to travel down several thousand feet to get to it) they find that the structure is really a feeding pen and an arena, established to play out the ultimate confrontation of the mutating alien species, consistently pitted against Sigourney Weaver in the Alien series, against the hunter-species faced by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1987 film and the less-memorable sequel with Danny Glover.

I won't waste the pads of my fingers typing in the names of most of the characters: the film doesn't seem to care what their names are anyway. One of them is played by Sanaa Lathan and she's the one who's least likely to die so we're set up to root for her. Everyone else? Well, they're not likely to live and so we watch them get picked off, one-by-one. There are two recognizable actors who you think may have a chance to make it the credits. Lance Henriksen is the financier of the expedition, Charles Bishop Weyland, giving several nods to his former android character from Aliens, Bishop and Ewen Bremner (he was "Spud" in Trainspotting) plays a reasonably likeable tagalong.

But the movie is not called Henriksen Vs Bremner so those two get short-shrift while Anderson spends some time crafting a few fine confrontations between the two outer space baddies. The Predators whack a few of the Aliens. The Aliens whack a few of the Predators. Everyone whacks the stupid humans in the way. One almost expects the Predator to hit the Alien on the back with a metal folding chair after a triple-suplex off the top turnbuckle.

The film is also rated PG-13, which means it can sneak in one "F" word and a smatter of splattering. Perhaps the uncut, unrated director's edition DVD will put the gore back in, and maybe the characters. Not only were their blood and guts excised but everything else about them as well.