The Arrival - Die Ankunft

After reading some of the negative reviews here I almost didn't watch it. Glad I watched. As one reviewer said, it's a bit like an extended X-files episode. That's not a bad thing, especially today when most of what passes for sci-fi is little more than cowboys in space with both sides shooting at each other with "advanced" weapons that cannot hit the side of a barn.

The Premise here is aliens are on earth and using Climate change as cover for their plot to warm up the earth quickly (they like it hot) so they can displace us.

No need to detail all that happens, suffice it to say there are a few minor twists but no real surprises. Yet it flows along well, characters get just the amount of development they need and no more. No huge plot holes once you accept the premises that underlay the aliens being here in the first place.

It's not often you can say a Charlie Sheen release is ahead of the curve but this movie, which deals in satellite dishes pointing at space, alien invasion, and conspiracy, was a year before the likes of Contact and Men in Black. It even beat Independence Day to the theatres by about a month. It of course didn't become as successful as any of those movies but, it has some smart ideas which play out well. It has the look and feel of an X-Files episode with a huge budget and really wouldn't feel out of place within the universe of Mulder and Scully. Sure, the special effects look very 90's now, and the story perhaps could use a little work. Sheen, however, puts in a strong performance in what was one of his final big-screen outings before descending into straight to video releases. A sequel appeared a couple of years later without Sheen and his character killed off, It's a shame because this could have become a series of movies, all with Charlie onboard, had things just gone a little differently.

This aliens vs. earth film succeeded because it added humor to the suspense story and Charlie Sheen did a great job adding to that with an expression-filled face that made he and this film fun to watch.

Story-wise, most of it made no sense as Sheen got out of one impossible scrap after another but good sci-fi special effects and suspense helped make the story interesting and fast-moving. You get caught up in the story and don't care if their are plenty of holes in it. It's also pretty tame, language-wise. Lindsay Crouse provides the female interest and Ron Silver the villain, a familiar role for him.

The film was popular enough to make a sequel, but that horrible. Don't waste your time on that one.

Charlie Sheen plays Zane, a radio astronomer who accidentally discovers an alien signal from space, that also has origins on Earth. When he tries to tell his boss(Ron Silver, very good) he downplays and denies the importance of the find. Zane then finds out he has been fired, and the tape he gave to his boss disappears, so now very suspicious, he undertakes his own investigation, which leads him to an alarming truth about aliens who are indeed very much among us...

Well written and directed by David Twohy, this science fiction film is a pleasant surprise, and Charlie Sheen is appealing and believable as the man determined to find the truth, and warn the world; sounds like a certain FBI agent from "The X-Files"...

This is a cool film. Very solid story, good performances, catchy SFX. Better than most sci-fi out there.