ALIEN NATION - DVD review

There's no limit to the creative worlds a sharp, imaginative mind can dream up. I can just envision the delight in screenwriter Rockne S. O'Bannon's brain cells when he thought up the idea of having a colony of space aliens land on Earth and become a part of our society. He probably figured it would make a good sci-fi thriller and a good little parable about human understanding and bigotry, too. Unfortunately, what we finally get in "Alien Nation," the 1988 film from director Graham Baker, is an inventive premise and a rather routine, buddy-cop realization of it.

The idea behind the story is promising. A gargantuan alien spacecraft is crippled and forced to land on Earth while carrying a shipload of slave laborers, genetically engineered for enormous strength. This former slave population becomes known on Earth as the "newcomers" and is welcomed with open arms by the U.S. government.

In about three years their population grows to a quarter of a million individuals, which is where we take up our narrative in the year 1991. The bulk of the new arrivals appear to live in Los Angeles, where the story takes place. They live in their own quarter of town and aren't all that much different from human beings. They have oddly spotted, hairless heads, no outer ears, and two hearts. They can breath methane gas, get high on sour milk, and dissolve in salt water. In other words, your average folks next door. You can already tell this setup has strong potential for themes of prejudice and race relations.

But the premise goes nowhere of any thought-provoking interest. Instead, it begins and ends as an ordinary police mystery, complete with gun fights, chase scenes, and things blowing up in the night. It opens in standard Hollywood fashion, with a typical hard-ass cop, Matthew Sykes (James Caan), and his best-friend partner patrolling a "newcomer" neighborhood. We know Sykes from dozens of previous pictures where his brother movie cops are divorced, live alone in small cluttered apartments, fail to pay their utility bills, and have no friends outside their patrol cars. So, when his best friend and partner gets killed by a "newcomer" in what appears to be an attempted stickup, Sykes goes ballistic to find the murderer. We can see Sykes isn't racially prejudiced because he's white and his best-friend partner was black, but he is highly space-alien prejudiced and blames practically the whole "newcomer" community for his friend's death.

Now, you can see this next angle coming a mile away, right? Who does he get for a new partner but a "newcomer" cop being promoted as part of a publicity campaign to show the world how open-minded L.A. is. The new partner is named Francisco, Sam Francisco, in a series of jokes about the new names given to the aliens. Francisco is played with a disarming innocence, an unfailing politeness, and a mild-mannered, boyish charm by Mandy Patinkin.

Sykes and Francisco do not exactly personify love at first sight. From the beginning, Sykes only wants Francisco aboard to get information from him in tracking down his partner's alien killer. The investigation leads them to a wealthy and powerful "newcomer" named William Harcourt, played by an almost invisible Terrence Stamp. From here, the movie develops into a drug plot we've seen a hundred times before and since. Then, true to Hollywood's dumbest traditions, once the two cops are on to the baddies and the conspiracy and the drugs, they fail to tell their superiors and decide to play it alone. The expected gun battles, high-speed pursuits, and automobiles bursting into flames ensue, climaxed by the requisite helicopter flying overhead. The final thirty minutes of the movie are given over to an extended chase escapade.

If any of this were in the least bit exciting or suspenseful, it might have worked. If the screenplay had included even a marginal reference to human relations, it might have worked. If any of the actors but Patinkin had been anything but clichéd cutouts, it might have worked.

As it is, only Patinkin shows any genuine character, his personality not only a welcome change from the stereotypes around him but showing an actual developmental shift about halfway through the movie. It is he, for example, who provides the film's only moment of earnest philosophy when he tells Sykes that while he and his people appreciate human beings for accepting them and taking them in, he's dismayed that Earthlings can't live up to the high ideals they set for themselves. However, it's an indication of how serious the filmmakers were to follow this line of thought to note that when Francisco says this, both he and Sykes are almost dead drunk. And thus ends any pretense the film has to an intellectual bent.

Video:
The film is brief at only ninety minutes, and it comes to us in fairly ordinary picture and sound. Colors are OK but not especially sharp in focus or natural in tint. Sometimes they're overly loud, sometimes overly dark, sometimes overly muted; they're all over the map. It takes more than shooting at night to make good film noir. There is some minor grain to be found in the 2.13:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation but, otherwise, no artifacts of any consequence.

Audio:
The audio choices are Dolby Digital 4.1 or Dolby Stereo Surround, the former somewhat bright and hard-edged. There are a few forceful rear-channel effects of note, particularly during scenes of gunfire and, of course, during the helicopter sequence.

Extras:
As far as bonus features are concerned, there aren't many. Mainly, there are two short featurettes made at the time of the film's production, behind-the-scenes affairs amounting to little more than ten minutes of interviews, film clips, and hype. Fox provide a measly sixteen scene selections, a well-worn pan-and-scan theatrical trailer, and three TV spots. English and French are the spoken language options, English and Spanish the subtitle choices.

Parting Shots:
As I've said, the film could have had a lot more going for it. But for whatever reasons, the filmmakers elected to overlook any considered allegory on racial intolerance in favor of good old Tinsel Town action. Curiously, the film spawned several made-for-television movie sequels and a TV series. Maybe I'm the only one who found the whole affair less than compelling. It's rated R for violence, partial nudity, and profanity.