Jean-Pierre Jeunet took the safest route to Hollywood available -- the Alien franchise. Simple plot, lots of opportunities to impose a personality, career advancement. Even David Fincher, much despised for his monastic Alien3, got to direct Seven.
Here's the bad news. Jeunut, creator of Delicatessan and City of Lost Children, has lost his scriptwriting partner and 90% of what makes his movies great. There are no choreographed bed-squeak/cello playing/cowsound testing/painting a ceiling while hanging from suspenders sequences; no siamese twins, circus performers or dance numbers. This was kind of expected. On the other hand, he does retain the beautiful entropy aesthetic; the same one that Marilyn Manson sampled for his Beautiful People and Sweet Dreams videos. Even better, Dominique Pinon, star of both City and Delicatessan, is along for the ride.
On the other hand, who cares? This is an Alien movie; a reunion with a childhood friend. (Of course, I would say that, I saw Alien when I was 7 and have loved the series ever since. ) The joy of the Alien series is that every movie is comfortably familiar, yet indelibly stamped with the director's vision. The plot is about phallic symbol(s) eating a bunch of unfortunate humans, someone's chest bursts open, someone else turns out to be a robot, some stupid bugger thinks that he can control the aliens, and the lights are always off or strobe. Cameron made Platoon with bugs, Scott gave us a dark corridor horror movie, while Fincher opted for one big religious allegory. Jeunet tries for a combination with a surreal melding of past movies for trippy postmodernism and happy gothic dancing on the rotting corpse of civilization joybuzzer dance.
Ripley, last seen diving into molten lava as Virgin Mary with Baby Alien; is cloned in the first five minutes. Extracting the alien, the scientists lead by the ever creepy Brad Dourif, decide to keep Ripley alive to see what kind of effects the alien genetics would have on her. Indeed, this is a different Ripley. There is no screaming, no tired resignation, no righteous anger at the manipulations of governments and corporations. Instead Ripley is harsh, almost overjoyed at her captor's inevitable fate as Alien food. Finally after three movies and many years of waking up only to fight more aliens, Ripley is having fun. Her blood is acid, her reflexes are increased tenfold and she has a mean streak. If that obnoxious brat Newt were to appear, Ripley'd probably toss her out an airlock for old time sakes.
Not wanting to give us another Aliens, Jeunet introduces mercenaries who are on the station to drop off cargo. That the cargo turns out to be humans for experimentation doesn't seem to bother them. Michael Wincott is his usual coyote voiced bastard, who really needs a starring role instead of the perpetual interesting minor character roles he always finds. Ron Perlman, on the other hand, is a wonderfully conniving asshole. Dominique Pinon is confined to a wheelchair for most of the movie, and it's strange to see him speaking English. Winona Ryder is an out-of-place waif with her own agenda.
As soon as we find out that Winona Ryder is trying to assassinate Ripley in order to prevent the aliens from hatching, the rest of the soldiers on the ship learn the same thing. No problem, since after a tense standoff between the mercenaries and soldiers, the aliens escape and there are no soldiers left. One particularly brutal scene is of soldiers jumping into an escape shuttle only to be followed by an alien slithering in before the doors close. You don't see the actual slaughter, but you pretty much know that the alien is munching them like potato chips.
The rest of the movie is a Lovecraftian chase through narrow hallways, ruined corriders, flooded kitchens, and past alien movies. Ripley's attitude is cold, and I cannot begin to tell you how much this change alters the series. Her best line is "you have an alien in you. In two hours its going to break out of your chest and you will die. I know. I'm its mother"
There are many plot twists that you can see coming from a mile away. Others are less obvious. The manner in which the aliens break out of their prison is brutal and shocking. The confrontation between Ripley and the Queen Alien is wonderfully hilarious and wholly surprising. Winona Ryder taking over the part of disgruntled defender of the human race is one of the sweetest ironies of this movie. Dominigue Pinon who was the clown in Delicatessan, should by most conventions of horror movies, be toast in the first half hour, but manages to stay alive the entire movie. Other characters with decidedly more forceful personalities become special effects mannequins early on. The acting is great, the sets are beautiful, the new vairation on the alien look is both surprising and expected. Unlike Starship Troopers you do not see the aliens ripping humans apart; which seems to be a tradition of Alien movies. This works most of the time, and you can overlook it when it fails.
As far as Jeunet , he didn't direct a Jeunet movie so much as he directed an Alien movie. If all directors who sold out, sold out in this way, there'd be a lot less depression in this world.