THE STORY: I can see this conversation taking place:

Director/ Writer: I've got this great idea for a movie. the character are trapped on a ship with an alien that wants to kill them!

Studio Exec: Its been done. It was called "Alien".

Director/ Writer: Yeah, but that was in space! This time the monster comes to Earth! He infests a boat in the sea and turns the crew into cyborgs to destroy mankind!

Studio Exec: Yeah, it was called "Alien"....and "Star Trek: First Contact".

Director/ Writer: Yeah, but did I tell you that the captain of the victim's crew is a greedy bastard that will ultimately betray them? did I tell you that the black guy is really an ex-navy weapons specialist that rigs a way to beat the alien and a way for the two main characters to escape at the same time?

Studio Exec: Wait...you mean the black guy actually lives at the end?

Director/ Writer: Oh, no! Of course not! That's impossible! But the two main characters, a man and a woman do!

Studio Exec: Okay...you've got my attention. What else?

Director/Writer: Well, there's a lot of killing, explosions and blood and guts....and CGI effects!

Studio Exec: All right! Now you're talking! If we add enough effects no one will realize that this movie is really goofy! Great idea!

Seriously folks, this movie is definitely a play by the numbers type flick. I almost knew instantly that Captain Everton (Donald Sutherland) was going to stab the others in the back. I knew that Richie, as the sole black character was doomed...it was a toss up between him and Heeko, the Indian character....but they both died anyway...being minorities and all.  We all knew that Foster and Baker would live being played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephen Baldwin. I did have some hope held out for Nadia (Joanna Pacula) but it was touch and go.

I still haven't gotten around to a synopsis have I? The Mir space station is hit by a wave of energy in space. At the time the Mir was in contact with some kind of communications ship at sea and the energy wave transmits itself into the ship. All of the high tech equipment goes haywire and the Russian scientists seem helpless to do anything about it. Nadia, the science officer merely screams, but since as I said, Nadia is played by Joanna Pacula we know we'll see her again.

Cut to a storm at sea, A tug boat is hauling a barge, but the storm is too powerful. The navigator, Foster, and the engineer, Baker try to persuade Captain Everton to cut the barge loose before its extra weight and drag sinks the ship, but Captain Everton is one of those greedy movie sea captains. You know, the kind will just ignore all reason and common sense, to ridiculous extremes. Even when his ship is being crippled by the storm, Everton won't listen to his crew. It doesn't make much of a difference what the captain wants however, since the barge's tow line breaks and it sinks. The tug boat now has a chance to survive the storm if they head into the eye and use that area of relative calm to repair the damage.

Arriving in the eye of the storm the tug crew comes to the Russian communications ship. After a quick look around they find no one aboard and the power turned off. Captain Everton is ecstatic. The salvage fee for the Russian ship will be a king's ransom! The rest of the crew seem happy about this and they restore power. When the power comes back on an accident involving the anchor sinks the tug boat, stranding the salvagers aboard the Russian ship. Soon after that Nadia reappears. She's terrified and explains to the tug crew that an alien intelligence has somehow transmitted itself from Mir into the ships computer. The intelligence sees humans as a virus and is determined to wipe them out. Its already killed the entire crew. Nadia was trying to keep the power off, because as long as the ship is unpowered the alien is helpless. Being electrical in nature the plan was to sink the ship. This will destroy the alien. (I guess...I mean the alien can survive in space, so I don't see how water is going to kill it!...Hey I didn't write it!)

Needless to say Everton doesn't believe her. He doesn't believe her even when little robot monsters begin to attack the crew and when the dead bodies of people start showing up with robotic parts all over them. If you're wondering if the cyborgacized crew look anything like the borg from Star Trek, I'll tell you...they do. Heck, I almost expected them to say "We are Locutus!"

This is about as good as it gets, folks. The alien robots and cyborgs wipe out the crew in the usual movie manner. I expected that to happen, but a held out a glimmer of hope for something interesting when the crew communicates with the alien. Not only did the alien not have anything interesting to say, like where it came from, why it came and how did it get here, it sounded just like ED 209 from Robocop. The alien intellignece succeeds in killing pretty much everyone, but Richie has set a trap before he dies. He's rigged a bunch of explosives to go off and built an escape "rocket chair" out of bits and bobs he's found. Foster and Baker, being the two "name actors" in the movie make it to the escape rocket chair and survive, while the bombs explode, sinking the ship and destroying the alien.

Now, I'm not saying that I could have written a better movie, but this movie is only worth watching as a way to waste time. Perhaps if the alien had another reason for killing besides the "People are bad for the universe" thing. Perhaps if the alien only used the dead crew as cyborg-guys...like the borg...it would have been scary. (Why build robots and cyborgs? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me...pick one or the other!) Maybe if we knew why Everton was such a greedy asshole. (and he wasn't so cartoony-bad) I could go on....hmmmm...maybe I could have written a better movie!

Best Lines: "Checkmate."- The alien.

1.) In order to be a character in any sci-fi/horror movie you must have to cut out the part of your brain that controls common sense and self preservation. When Richie and Woods find the machine shop where the alien intelligence is building robots, Richie wants to go in and look sat the stuff. Funk Dat! Even after he sees the machines turn the power back on after he himself shut it off he wants to go in like he's so fascinated with the robots. Look, I've got a lot valuable stuff in my home, but if'n I go into a room and see my electrical appliances acting on their own and building little robots....I'm leaving all of this [unwrite].

2.) Being a dickhead, the Captain doesn't want to believe Nadia's story of alien intelligence. I guess being a ship's captain doesn't require any kind of aptitude test. Machines acting on their own, a cyborgized guy running around and the captain can't get his mind away from his desire to somehow get the salvage money? No one is that greedy. People who seem to be that greedy are actually insane.

3.) Richie fires a rocket into the monster while its torturing foster. The explosion doesn't kill the alien, but it does stun it. More amazingly the explosion doesn't kill Foster....who is suspended a mere three feet from the alien!!! She should have been cooked by that blast!

4.) This alien intelligence sure didn't try very hard to kill the humans. The robot thingies can take a lot of hits from the weapons the crew has, there seem to far more than one of them...and that's not counting the borged up dead crew members, the intelligence has virtually all of the ship under electronic surveillance...yet it can't kill these guys? Gimme a [unwrite]in' break.

NUDITY AND SEX: None

HUH?: Geez....are there any aliens that actually like us? Outside of Star Trek and ET it seems like the entire universe wants to fold, spindle and mutilate humanity. Even Klaatu from The Day the Earth Stood Still came to earth in peace but left pretty much saying "You guys screw up and we're gonna get klingon on your ass!". Bad enough people hate each other....aliens hate us too!

This rocket chute escape thing is kind of....oh, there's no other way to put it...silly.

THE TALLY: I'd be more lenient on this movie is was older...but since its not its just a retread of something we've seen before. Not that a recycled plot makes an instantly bad movie. Its just that this one wasn't even done that well. I can honestly say that if I had to pick twenty action/sci-fi movies to rent that were made in the last five years,  would not pick this one. It doesn't stink really bad, but yeah, brother, it smells.