DNA

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.

I thought the first half of this movie was bad - there's a monster that's created by combining an ancient skeleton with the DNA of beetles, or maybe it's a space alien? Both explanations are given. A mad scientist (Jurgen Prochnow) has created this thing as a military weapon (oh yeah, the old completely uncontrollable monster as a weapon gag). A CIA agent and a local doctor / scientist / jungle guide / warrior guy try to stop them. There's just one plot hole after another. At one point the multi-tasking guy and the CIA agent are locked up in a drainage pipe, but escape simply by going to the next exit. They put a guy in a cage to act as bait for the monster, but there are people running around all over the place. Why would they assume the monster would go after the guy in the cage? And on and on.

But the second half of this movie is just a really cheap Predator rip off, scene-by-scene. You get two people laying motionless on a beach, and a monster's-eye view of them - he can't see them because, well, he's 99% blind I guess. The Predator couldn't see Schwarzenegger because he was covered in mud which masked his infra-red signature, but these folks aren't covered in mud. Apparently the creature saw Predator and realized that he shouldn't be able to see them. Then there's the scene where the Indian takes off his shirt and rubs something across his chest, preparing to do battle. And the scene where a big piece of tree trunk is hoisted into the air for a trap. Just for variety, they throw in a scene where a helicopter crashes behind our "good" characters and rolls towards them as they run away, very reminiscent of Aliens. Except the scene in this movie is comically bad. I don't see how anyone could watch it without laughing out loud at that special effect. There's also a drawn out death scene that drags everything to a complete halt just when it had finally started moving.

Anyway, this movie has nothing to recommend it. Prochnow's evil scientist character is really the only one that's developed to any degree, and of course, he's the one we're not supposed to like.

This wasnt a bad straight to video B grade movie,which is why I constantly go to the video store to purposely get these movies out. You know what you're in for the moment you rent such movies, so I'm not sure why people are surprised by its triteness. What were you guys expecting? Shakespeare?

Some people say DNA rips off scenes from movies like Jurassic Park,Alien and Predator. I prefer to say that it pays *homage* to those great movies by *borrowing* scenes from them.

As for the special effects, I can find it in my heart to forgive the producers as they probably didn't have enough budget to hire the technical wizards at ILM. Besides cheesy special effects are part of the fun in B movies!

And finally the fact that Mark Dacascos is in it elevates the film and prevents it from falling into the bog of true mediocrity. :-) Mark is truly a talented actor and martial artist and sometimes I wish he gets to do more mainstream films that are released theatrically.

Overall the movie is a fun, slightly cheesy, yet entertaining cheap thrill ride!

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...

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.