Alien Interceptors

I'm afraid this film was very disappointing. I love Olivier Gruner but he could have made this film with his eyes shut - in fact I think he did!

It's a shame 'cos this film could have been so much better. I still like him but I'll be more careful in future which films I buy. It's a shame 'cos I thought any film he starred in would be good! Wrong again.

What a horrible movie. This film is an absolute disgrace to science fiction because it is just incomplete. The organization that is charged with hunting down this alien creature had the most laughable methods any government group could use. Using nuclear weapons in a trigger happy style does not really seem like a very wise decision for a government group. And the alien in this film? oh please! If it is bullet proof, then why did the locals keep having to shoot it even though they know for the hundredth time it is bullet proof?! The same can be said for the fight scenes. The hero fights the alien bare handed, gets clobbered, gets up and fights it again, gets clobbered, and keeps on going on and on and on. I swear the hero was trying to show off his fancy martial arts fighting rather than trying to figure out a way to kill the alien. After about an hour or so of repeatitive and monotonous fighting, the government decides to go nuclear again. This film is bad because of the plot. It is too simple: government sends a team of clumsy specialists to kill an alien, which in turn kills them. FINISHED! Unlike films such as Predator,(which the alien in this film is copied from)Interceptors is a half-done, goofy action flick. If you can imagine the typical movie hero defeating dozens of thugs, put the alien as the hero and the specialists as the thugs and you got an idea of what the action in this show is like.

There seems to be an interesting correlation between cheesy military/science-fiction movies and the F-117A fighter bomber - practically every movie that has this type of plane in it turns out cheesy. "Interceptors" is no exception. Basically this is the story of an incompetent, clumsy, immature Department of Defense contracted mercenary team sent into Baja California to recover (supposedly) a crashed F-117A. When the team is deployed into Mexico, they discover that this is no recovery operation - it's an extraterrestrial manhunt. The low budget nature of this film makes it incredibly cheesy, but particularly hilarious. The mercenaries run around in a black sport utility vehicle, wearing Walkman earphones which are actually supposed to be a radio communications system. Even better, at the end of the movie, we're to believe that it's possible to 'run' from the blast wave of a thermonuclear explosion. The list of oversights and flaws is incredible - but somehow "Interceptors" doesn't seem quite as intellectually insulting as most of its contemporaries, most likely a result of the humorous nature of the film (either by accident or design of the directors). It's hard to watch this film without breaking down into fits of wild laughter. The stupidity and haphazard flow of the movie is almost akin to the Hong Kong style of comedies. (The ending scene, in which the mercenary leader 'mistakes' a village woman for the alien entity is classic.) It's a shame "Interceptors" is one of those direct-to-video movies...it would have been an absolute riot in theatres. If viewed as a sci-fi or action flick, "Interceptors" fails horribly. But as a (accidental) comedy, it's priceless. The good point is the fact that most of the action is computer generated (albiet, the low budget CGI looks like something you'd see while playing on an Nintendo64). The directors don't use stock footage, and the aerial battle action is somewhat interesting. It's a good film to watch if you have time to waste, are home sick, or want to throw a popcorn party with your friends. The outtakes at the end of the movie are a plus.

The actual overall movie wasn't too bad in of itself but it is terrible compared to the predator movies. It has almost the exact same plot as the original Predator. A group of special-forces types are sent in on a bogus mission and start getting picked off by an alien who can turn invisible. The worst part of this rip-off is that they didn't even attempt to hide the fact that they ripped the whole thing off. The most obvious thing being that whenever the view switches to the alien's point of view they used the EXACT SAME sound effects!! If you've never seen Predator a 5 out of 10 if you have... 2.

I'm still scratching my head over that. Brad Dorrif is an intelligent man, but this is not an intelligent script. Enter a series of my pet peeves - a film that can't show its material, rather has to announce it all (the dogfight scenes, anything having anything to do with technology); reducing scientific speak/theories/inventions to middle school buzzwords; Dourif's character explaining the mission to the expendables in such obvious/idiotic terms. Very seldom has the script made that much effort to make it clear a character is lying. So clear that every other character should smell it and walk the other way, but they don't because that would be the intelligent thing to do and we wouldn't have a movie.

When a machine gun barely phases an alien, what would you do? Keep shooting or run? How ‘bout fight it barefisted? In Predator, Arnold knew he could hurt the creature when those two went head to head, they made it bleed and the guns could kill it but the problem was seeing it and hitting the damn thing. Back to Interceptor Force, when a gun isn't even making it blink, you can keep shooting, but I'll be in the next time zone.

CG is not the way to go for alien creatures for low budget films. This film makes it clear why HG Geiger and Stan Winston are atop their class, and why puppets/suits/makeup is still superior to CGI for many effects. Last comments on the alien: it has the ability to walk through walls, but only seems to use that ability for the bad guys. The good guys it'll face in wide open. Discrimination?

Whew, sound effects, from what I heard, are mostly stock that have been used in video games (Doom) and other movies (Predator). The creature's POV shots – nice green tint and way too many cuts to the alien's perspective. It gets nauseating to watch. The characters - unbiased stupidity all around. Everyone gets a bad rep in this film. From the Mexicans, to the Americans, the men, the women-everyone has maybe one intelligent line. Maybe. Why didn't the alien stop and give a speech about Solaranite and end with `You humans and your stupid minds! Stupid! STUPID!'

Even as a comedy it fails. There is a point when the lines get too cheesy, too stupid, the situations get too unrealistic and too unbelievable to sustain even a silly picture. Even though I'm not that big a fan of the Death Machine I will say that at least that film knew what it was doing. Interceptor Force has no clue.