Enemy Mine (B-) |
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STARS...
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DIRECTOR: Wolfgang Petersen
BEST BETS: |
SYNOPSIS... In the future, a human battles aliens in space. The human pilot pursues an alien ship down to a planet. Both crashland. In order to survive, the alien and the human become friendly. They learn parts of each other's language. The alien, pregnant, gives birth, then dies. The alien child wanders into a space scavenger's camp, becoming a slave. The human, injured, is taken up into space. After recovering, he returns to the planet in search of the alien child. Other humans join him on the planet, helping to save the alien child. On the alien child's home planet, the human takes part in an ancient religious ceremony. |
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Review: Director Wolfgang Petersen, working from a Screenplay, by Edward Khmara, (based on the Story, by Barry Longyear), has created an ambitious, if not entirely successful, Sci-Fi epic. Dennis Quaid ("Innerspace"), is a space fighter pilot in the future. Quaid's narration sets the scene. "By late in the 21st century, the nations of Earth were finally at peace, working together to explore and colonize the distance reaches of space. Unfortunately, we weren't alone out there." Reptile-like aliens, called Dracs, having been engaging in hit and run battles with human space explorers. During a dogfight between Quaid and a Drac warrior, both of them crash land on a hostile planet. Eventually these two, hostile to each other, must depend on the other to survive. This film is basically "Robinson Crusoe" in space. It's not as good a film as George Pal's similarly themed "Robinson Crusoe on Mars", but it does have it's moments. My favorite scene takes place at the end of the film. On the Drac home planet, Quaid chants a traditional Drac holy prayer in the native language. The combination of a beautiful matte painting, stirring Music, an impressive crowd scene, a narrator's fluid words, and Quaid's gutteral utterings, make for a moving and uplifting scene. Quaid, as directed by Peterson, tends to overact. Louis Gosset Jr. ("The Guardian"), on the other hand, gives a calm, well modulated performance as the reptile-like alien, Drac. Some of their scenes together, as they begin to learn words in each others languages, have a lot of charm. The film's aliens, Created and Designed by Chris Walas, are appropriately and convincingly strange. They include a large, long necked snake/squid thing and its prey, and a smaller turtle-shelled type creature. The Drac reptileman makeup, as worn by Louis Gossett Jr. and Blimper Robinson, was also done by Walas, and is quite good. Director of Photography, Tony Imi, aided greatly by wonderful matte paintings, by Industrial Light & Magic, delivers wonderful shots both in space and on the planet's surface. Particularly good is a long shot of the white space-suited Quaid, walking through the reddish planetary landscape, with smoke rising around him from volcanic fissures. The Music, Composed and Conducted by Maurice Jarre, ranges between standard "spacey," and overblown, full orchestrated stuff that sometimes distracts from the on screen action. ENEMY MINE should be fairly watchable for most Sci-Fi fans. Those expecting non-stop excitement on the scale of a "Star Wars" movie may be disappointed: ENEMY MINE is NOT a gold mine of entertainment. For the patient viewer, however, a silver lining awaits. |
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