By Charly SHELTON

For a while there weren’t many female-led action movies. The leads were mostly guys like Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. There was, however, Linda Hamilton. Sarah Connor from “Terminator 2” was the bar to hit for a female cool action star. Now James Cameron, the man who brought us Sarah Connor, has brought another female action lead – “Alita: Battle Angel.” And while Sarah Connor was alone in her field at the time, Alita is kind of lost in the shuffle of female-led action films – there’s not much that makes Alita as a character stand out. And the case is the same with this film: lost in the shuffle of high-concept, special effects-driven franchise starters with not much to make it stand-out from all the others.

That’s not to say this movie isn’t a lot of fun. I’m a sucker for these kinds of flicks. The story revolves around Alita (Rosa Salazar), a cyborg of forgotten origin who has the face and mind of a young lady, the robot body of an alien assassin and the enlarged eyes of an anime character. As she discovers her surroundings, her new world set in the post-apocalyptic society of Iron City, she discovers more about herself and her power. With the help of Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), her surrogate father and the one that pieces her robot body together, she will encounter the many injustices of her society that are a loose allegory for our time (I guess, in some cases). Mostly, it’s about jumping around like Yoda in “Revenge of the Sith” and kicking gigantic, ridiculous robot assassin butt. It’s a lot of fun to watch all of this play out and, even though a lot of the aspects are derivative of other projects like “Rollerball,” “Terminator” and “Elysium,” I still had a great time.

I will say the ending is rather anti-climactic. Without giving too much away, it does the big reveal the audience is waiting for and then just ends, without exploring it. It’s kind of what the whole movie was building to – the final confrontation – and it puts it off to a sequel. But then writer/producer James Cameron said they don’t know if it’s going to happen yet.

“Well, we obviously have a plan for that,” Cameron told entertainment website Digital Spy last week. “But it’s cheeky to set up a sequel before you’re proven. That can blow back in your face. We think of something like Warcraft that was clearly set up with the intention to do sequels, and then it becomes mock-able because the film doesn’t succeed. But I don’t worry about stuff like that. If the film fails, it’s its own punishment, you know? It doesn’t matter if we get mocked on top of having failed.”

The same basic thing was said about “Venom” last year, even though they teased Woody Harrelson as Carnage in the upcoming sequel during the first film’s post-credit bumper. “Venom” sequel was just greenlit in January, so maybe in several months we’ll hear about the sequel we all know is coming for “Alita.”

Regardless, this film is a fun ride if not particularly groundbreaking or standout. It’s a great Valentine’s Day movie with a bit of a love story, some great special effects and a lot of action.

Rated PG-13 and directed by Robert Rodriguez, I give this film 3 out of 5 stars.

  Charly Shelton