ADN

The story takes place in province of Sarawak in the island of Borneo Malaysia, and the scenery is beautiful.

An alien creature called Balakai's DNA gets used to create an alien clone that goes in a rampage killing people at random in the jungles of Borneo.

The script is the worst part of this movie. There's lot of scene changes that doesn't blend smoothly, and a plot that doesn't make sense at times. As many people have pointed out, there are the blatant rip off of scenes from the movie Predator.

Everything else about the movie is pretty good (for a B movie that is). Acting is pretty good, special effect is okay, and there's some decent action, and a story that's reasonably compelling.

So it was a good movie to watch and provided good 2 hours of entertainment.

When you take three legendary, blockbuster hits Predator (1987), Alien (1979) and Jurassic Park (1993), and you put them in one big cooking pot and add some water. OK, next you put jungle, local Borneo tribes, fake Anaconda snakes, few helicopters and a few gore scenes. Now, Carefully chose actors... But, too late! Jurgen Prochnow with very neurotic performance and nervous eyes, stiff as a board... A fine actor, didn't expect him here... put some B actress just for cuteness, a little kid for more cuteness, Mark Dacascoss for martial arts action fans to see, but WRONG! no martial arts here! And finally add a creature which was created from the bug DNA (a local myth from Borneo tribes, you can see the cravings in the cave at the beginning of the movie, the craves were craved like in 1997... very ancient!) The creature looks like Alien very much, has those movements, but visually it reminds you more of Syl from "Species" (1996), but as a cheap halloween costume, creature has, to look more cool, a heat vision, or a negative vision, or perhaps a combo of sepia and negative... figure it out! It has a cloaking mechanism and it has very lame roars... Now, you spice this with few fake guns, grenade launcher toy and bad acting. And you get this piece of cr... I mean cake. And guess what... you ain't gonna like it.

The film starts in Sarawak , a province of North of Borneo where an idealistic doctor named Ash (Mark Dacascos of Double dragon). He mistakenly reveals his DNA theories to an evil scientific (Jurgen Prochnow , Das Boat) who utilizes on illegal genetic experiments , blending beetle and alien DNA . As a nasty scientist's DNA experiment on the bones of a mysterious jungle creature brings the carnivorous beast to life . Two years later , there appear various bodies dead and wounded ; one mutant , a giant insect-like specie with super powers , lurks in the lush forest from into perilous jungles , waiting for prey . The weird creature begins attacking one by one . Meantime , Ash along with a beautiful doctor( Robin McKee) are surrounded and both of whom set out to track it down.

This is a semi-remake to ¨Predator¨, told in terms of jungle warfare with an over seven-foot-tall monster on the loose . It's a brutal , exciting and violent Sci-Fi thriller with gory action and little logic . So we ought sit through the creature dispatch enemies one by one before the ending showdown comes , leaving the utter mechanics of the thing to keep our interest buzzing . The final confrontation is particularly exciting stuff , even though it makes no great sense . The result is thoroughly unpleasant but undeniably thrilling action movie . Acceptable special effects and special make-up by , nowadays famous , : Robert Kurtzman , Greg Nicotero , Howard Berger . Adequate cinematography by Gerry Lively and nice musical score fitting to action by Christopher Stone . The motion picture was regularly directed by William Mesa , he's usually visual effects supervisor (Dark Water , Deep blue sea) and occasionally cinema director . Rating : Passable and entertaining.

Dacascos turns in one of his better performances in the total Predator rip off. I mean there was scenes that look like they were cut and pasted right from Predator. The special effects were generally good for a 'B' movie, but there was a few scenes where it looked like they just ran out of money (i.e. the holicopter crash). Not bad if you're in the mood for a little no thinking 'b' sci fi...

When I got about one hour into the film I noticed something. THIS IS EXACTLY LIKE PREDATOR! These people basicly lifted scenes right out of predator. i.e. the monster is invisible, the hero makes traps and then waits on a tree, the monster has heat seeking vision and the monster looks a lot like the predator. This film had a good creature costume and some good cgi for the it too. But near the end when the helicopter crashes, the effects are probably the worst you have ever seen. Rent it if you want a good laugh. But rent Predator first.

Rated 14A for some violence and some language (Canadian rating)

14A is like a PG-13 rating in the U.S.A.