Strong and Moving!

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The buddy cop movie was a popular and short lived genre from the late 1980s early 1990s . It was obvious why it was so short lived because it followed a standard formula of a hard bitten veteran cop getting teamed up with an innocent or unlikely partner . Veteran doesn't like innocent partner but they bond and innocent partner wins veteran's respect as they crack the case together ALIEN NATION brings a gimmick to this formula and that is one of them is an alien ! You see an alien race have come to Earth and Ronald Reagen allows them to stay and a few years later the aliens try to assimilate to Earth ways . James Cann plays tough cop Matthew Sykes whose partner is killed in a shoot out and gets partnered by alien newcomer Sam Francisco One can't help noticing the potential to ALIEN NATION . We don't learn much about the aliens and perhaps mindful of this the producers thought there'd be a lot of mileage in bringing out more sequels expanding upon the aliens culture . As it stood the film didn't do very well but a television series was quickly commissioned and just as quickly cancelled but did lead to a continuation via a series of made for television films It's easy to understand why ALIEN NATION wasn't a big box office success . Film makers like Paul Verhoeven were really pushing the boat out with violence round about this time and even when it was released ALIEN NATION seemed slightly tame . It's also a film that tries to bring a bit of satirical humour such as a scene where RAMBO 6 is advertised at the cinema and the humorous names of the visitors " Rudyard Kipling no sh*t ! " but there isn't enough of this in the film

ALIEN NATIONThis film was fun. It was basically a normal police movie. There was no need to have any aliens in it at all, but it made a nice little twist.Aliens have come to Earth and the live with us... they have jobs and are treated in most cases as normal people. But there are some people who do not like them, who do not trust them... and Detective Sergeant Matthew Sykes is one of those people. He has always distrusted the Newcomers. When his partner gets killed by a Newcomer, he volunteers to parter with one to help find the murderer.It is a movie about relationships. 2 partners who do not like each other having to work together and trust each other. The relationship is kind of like Riggs & Murtaugh in the original Lethal Weapon movie. They did not get on, but by the end of the film they were best friends and there for each other.The aliens were pretty good even though the make up was terrible. You can't hurt them by kicking them between the legs... their delicate area is under their arms near the armpit. Also, they burn in salt water. It can kill them.Like I said before, the make up was bad. You could see they were wearing rubber egg heads. and the noses looked like they could fall off at any point.The film stars James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp and Kevyn Major Howard. The acting was OK. Not spectacular, but it was alright.It was just a good police chase/detective film. It was fun but not really full of surprises.I will give this film 7 out of 10.I love sci-fi films and action police films... it was my kind of movie.For more reviews, please like my Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ordinary-Person-Movie- Reviews/456572047728204?ref=hl

Caan stars as Sykes, a cop who having seen his partner he has known for years get blown away, gets over him very quickly and takes on a 'newcomer' as his partner.the thing is about this newcomer, it's the club singer from Dick Tracey with some really bad make-up on.together, they must foil a drugs ring led by General Zod and Rudyard Kipling, come to terms with a little diverting sub-plot about race, creed, and the effects it has on society, and of course, realise that at this point in his career, Caan would do almost anything to back into the movies after his little 'problem'.it starts off really well. your typical cop-buddy movie, with all your clichés thrown in from way back since cop movies begun.Sykes hates all newcomers, obviously some sort of xenophobe as he hasn't even left his country, but he teams up with Francisco, not just to get revenge for his partner, but maybe because he wants to get 'one-up' on these aliens, as they are more intelligent than humans.there are some humorous moments and a lot of effort has been put into the story and the script, it's just too short for it's own good. We never get to feel the struggle Sykes goes through, apart from him putting a tape in his pocket, and wearing the same clothes all the time. His relationship with Francisco, evolves too quickly and they become friends too soon, so it makes you care less about what is going on in the film.Stamp is on villain duties, as every English actor at the time played a villain, he is throwaway and not very interesting. the effects are bad, and all in all, it does fail on many levels.

I remember how fascinated I was with the concepts explored in this picture back in the day - the idea of curdled milk as refreshing, and sea water corrosive to an alien race. The idea of extra-terrestrials living and working among us, assimilating into society while confronting a similar type of racism that all 'different' cultures experience when settling in a new environment. It's what gives focus to the relationship between detective Matt Sykes (James Caan) and his 'Newcomer' partner Sam Francisco (Mandy Patinkin). That's a great speech by Sam/George where he laments how humans have failed to live up to the same potential they have offered the aliens. Makes you think about how we really haven't improved all that much as a society over the past twenty years.Watching the film the other night, I was struck by how much blatant product placement went on in the picture - subtle ads for stuff like Tasters Choice Coffee, Smirnoff Vodka, and repeated images of those Bartles and James guys before they went down in a hail of gunfire during the convenience store robbery. There was even a marquee for Rambo III playing in theaters at the time; I wonder why they offered free time to a competitor.I was probably more intrigued by the memory of this picture than the film itself; as I watched it the other night I thought that the second half moved rather slowly. I'm having a hard time understanding why the villain Harcourt (Terence Stamp) went to such great lengths to protect his investment in Jabluka, when for all intents and purposes, the aliens could get it anywhere. I mean really, today you can buy Tide in a dozen assorted flavors.And speaking of tides, it was rather noble to see George risk his life to save a buddy by hanging out over an ocean full of battery acid. You don't have to be an alien to know that that was a wild and crazy thing to do. I thought about how all that salt spray should have been hitting George in the face, but then you wouldn't have had the dramatic save for this buddy movie to end on a high note.