ALIEN NATION. Directed by Graham Baker; written by Rockne S. O'Bannon; produced by Gale Anne Hurd and Richard Kobritz for Twentieth Century Fox. Starring James Caan and Mandy Patinkin.
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Alien Nation is 2/3 cops and robbers and 1/3 science fiction. It's interesting enough as it is, but would be a better movie if those proportions were reversed. Maybe the inevitable sequel will rearrange the priorities a bit.
The premise of the movie is a fascinating one. Alien Nation takes place in a period little explored in science fiction. It's set after our first encounter with an alien race, but considerably before such comfortable multi-racial working arrangements as one finds in, say, Star Trek, for example, have become commonplace.
"Newcomers," aliens accidently stranded on earth, are just beginning to adjust to Earth culture. There's a lot of prejudice against them, not too surprisingly, perhaps. They look pretty strange and have some peculiar habits and physiological quirks. (They get drunk on sour milk, for example.)
But, as it turns out, they're a lot like us. Particularly in that their barrel has good and bad apples in it just like ours. The bad ones do things like kill people and try to sell them dangerous drugs. And the good ones, as cops, try to curb this activity.
Good guy George (Patinkin) is the kind of alien no one would mind having next door. Considerate, kind, and hard-working, he also shows us plenty of guts in the movie's finale. Terence Stamp, who has played nasty non-humans before (Superman II) is all sleek creepiness as the chief villian.
So Alien Nation's science fiction angle is original and interesting. But, as you may have gathered from the foregoing, the police procedural side of the story is predictable and contrived.
It's not Caan's fault, since he does a good job, as usual, with the crusty Detective Sykes. But this kind of character has been so over-played that it's lost whatever edge it once had. Nor is it Patinkin's. He's quite appealing, again, as usual, even under a ton of alien makeup.
But this particular variant of cop movies, the "odd couple" angle, has more than played itself out. Hopefully this human-alien twosome, talented and appealing as it is, will finally bring us the last word on the subject. But I wouldn't count on it.
November 2, 1988