Alien Nation | | Cast : | James Caan, Mandy Patinkin | | Director : | Graham Baker | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Dolby, Widescreen | | Released Date : | October 07, 1988 | | DVD Released Date : | June 07, 2005 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 17, 2005 | | Summary | Neat concept executed like any other cop movie. | Content
 | Do you like cop movies? If you do then you're in luck. Alien Nation is essentially a cop movie... with aliens. The fact that it is just a cop movie with aliens is what makes this movie a little groundbreaking. However like any other genre of movies, this cop movie isn't perfect. It falls into some of the same trappings of most cop movies. In spite of that Alien Nation is innovative in the science fiction genre, even if the innovation itself has been played out to nausea elsewhere.
This isn't high cop drama like Black Rain or Heat. It isn't necessarily low cop drama either like V.I. Warshowski or The Rookie. The cop drama part is pretty much in the middle. So what makes it innovative? Well... it's the aliens. One of the things that make really good science fiction is when aspects of real life get represented in another fashion. Films like Aliens with their Viet Nam War contrast, Contact with its spiritual belief contrast, and V with their Holocaust similarities all stand out above the crowd because they compare their situations with real issues. Alien Nation does the same. Not with the buddy cop themes but with the themes of racial hatred and discrimination. Instead of some other ethnic minority you get alien refugees from another planet. You get all the parallels of bigotry in modern society in this film, and they address it in a concise manner.
That been said it's still a cop movie overall. Oddly matched police officers learning to accept each other, drug lord looking to take over, lots of gunplay and cop jokes... they all end up here. This aspect of the movie is merely average. Just like all the other cop movies you have seen over the decades. The cinematography, settings, script, and style all fall victims to the cop movie theme as they are all nothing to really write home about when compared to other police films. This doesn't mean the script, cinematography and other stuff I mentioned is bad. It just doesn't stand out above the crowd.
Appreciate Alien Nation for what it is: a parallel to society's discrimination against people different than us. Understand the fact that the vehicle they used to portray this, and it was an appropriate one at that, was a clichéd cop plot. If you like cop movies and Sci-Fi then you found a winner here. For the rest of you I won't say it's an overall great movie, but I will say it's a pretty good one. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 08, 2005 | | Summary | One of the best.... | Content
| This was one of the best attempts at what a multi racial society might go through in growing pains...There was alot of thought here and unlike the pitiful series that came later, no attempt at PC thought. James Caan put in one of his best parts here since Gardens of Stone and made the movie beliveable for its portrait of racial interplay. One sees just how quick sympathy disppears for the newcomers (refugees, freedmen etc) It is a good analogy for the world at large with drug problems, interplay between 2 TOTALLY different species et al. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 17, 2004 | | Summary | yes -- i really like it but really want the tv series.. | Content
| this is a great pilot for the tv series that followed. the tv series allowed each character to grow and change, and their alien-ness to one another to blur as they continued to fight crime.
there were a lot of layers to this series besides the basic sci-fi "stranger in a strange land"-"my how different we are" type of story. The episodes dealt with family, romance, detective work, friendship, and a horrific past endured on the way to planet earth.
It has that blade-runner sort of feel, on the edge of the apocalypse type of city, and a pinch of buckaroo bonzai, cagney and lacey (the team had to prove themselves and break "glass ceilings") mixed up with a dash of starman for good measure.
i really enjoyed the tongue in cheek, the partnership formed, and the overcoming of racism.
...'bring me your huddled masses..." i really really implore the powers that be to bring the tv series to DVD.
Thank you in advance. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 01, 2004 | | Summary | Why is making a DVD so hard? | Content
| I purchased this DVD the other day and was really pleased with how the picture looked, at first. Then it looked a little odd to me. This DVD says on the back "WIDESCREEN VERSION: Presented in a letterbox widescreen format preserving the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition." Well, it doesn't preserve the ratio, it creates the ratio by cutting off the top and bottom of the picture. So the framing is the same, but the picture is cut out. That makes sense. In case your wondering, I know this because I compared it to a fullscreen VHS copy. Here is an example, there is a scene when Sikes and Fransisco are inspecting a pair of boots. When they go to medium close up on Sikes you can see the middle letters of DALLAS on top of COWBOYS on Sikes' shirt in the fullscreen version. In this DVD version you can barely see the top of the DALLAS letters. Why can't they just get it right the first time? This is probably all part of an elaborate scheme to make people purchase another edition that is corrected. I would give it 5 stars because I love this movie, but I can't overlook this major problem with the DVD so it gets 3. |
| Rating | | | Date | October 13, 2004 | | Summary | Good movie, great show | Content
| I saw the TV series before I saw the movie. The movie is pretty good, and I'm glad it's out on DVD. The series and subsequent TV-movies were an excellent continuation of the movie, and I'm adding my vote that I hope they make it to DVD too. |
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