Roswell

At an army reunion, Jesse Marcel still finds he is treated with derision by his colleagues for claims he made years ago when serving in Roswell, New Mexico. Marcel finds the reunion provides him with more information and a fresh perspective on what happened. In flashbacks he remembers his original discovery of a suspected crash site with unearthly metals, his report and the following coverup. However as more witnesses confide in him how much can he believe is true, a problem that becomes even more pronounced with the input of the mysterious Townsend.

This tv movie is actually quite good. The story is told in flashback and allows us to hear witnesses put in their accounts rather than just see events unfold as fact. This allows the story to be less of a story about what happening at Roswell, but instead to be an account of what may have happened - pieced together over the film. The end result is that the picture painted is quite reasonable and is a bit more believable because we get it bit by bit, accounts adding to other accounts making the whole thing more believable. The only downside of this is that the film doesn't manage to come down on either side of the arguement and doesn't take a stance on what it thinks happens (although this may be a good thing).

The story moves along slowly, trying to remain credible despite the nature of the material,, but eventually it ruins this slow building in one key scene. The final scene between Marcel and Townsend is really enjoyable and moves really fast. Like Marcel we're not sure if Townsend is telling the truth or if he's misleading Marcel and us - in this respect it's still good. However this scene takes away a lot of the credibility that it has built up - Townsend begins to reveal all sorts of stories including tales of aliens messing with human DNA to shape evolution etc, and it really makes you doubt the whole thing. However, despite this it's still a very interesting story.

MacLachlan is good here as the man who knows what he saw but can't explain it, but his makeup for his "old-age" character is quite poor. Sheen may only have a small role but he does manage to have a great screen presence. The rest of the cast is really well filled out by well known faces such as Gunton, Xander Berkeley, Peter MacNicol and Charles Martin Smith.

Overall this is an interesting film that almost manages to move gradually enough to keep cynics on board while still satisfying the X-files crowd. The ending is a little sudden and requires a great leap of faith to accept Sheen's suggestions - but then maybe that's the point. Good.

This Docu-Movie (apparently TV Release in USA) starts off all Doco style in the opening credits, which is great, not highly original, but sets the mood instantly. All key players are present. Marcel (both Jesse and Jess Jr), Ramey, Dubose and Brazel, and are played well.

If you want a retrospective of the Roswell incident played out in Hollywood style, this is the best yet. Not much artistic license taken, which when dealing with something based in fact, is much appreciated.

The crash site was what I really wanted to see portrayed, as this hasn't been recreated previously on film (well, that's even mildly believable) and (if also based on fact) proved to be, the SMOKING GUN. The size of the site is the "Think Tank" for this film.

Fans of Kyle Mclachlan will love this too. Maybe not as much as Blue Velvet, but that's another story...........

When watching this film , viewers have to keep 2 things in mind: That this is a TV movie, and that this movie was made to tell a story, not to blow you away. While some things in this movie were made up in order to tell the real story

(As far as I know, the whole thing about the reunion of all the soldiers and Jesse Marcel talking with a lot of them in order to find out what happened , is made up. While Jesse Marcel did exist and everything that the movie said that happened to him really did happen to him, the scenario of him talking to all this people 30+ years later was created to tell the story of the crash). But when it comes to what is important: The Roswell Incident, this movie is accurate with what eye witnesses have been saying for years. If you are an skeptic who really doesn't care about the subject at all, then you will find little, or no entertainment value here.

But if this subject interests you, this movie will entertain you and inform you. Highly recommended to all of you who are curious about what happened in Roswell New Mexico in July of 1947.

(There May Be Spoilers) Story about the crash outside of Roswell New Mexico, in the early summer of 1947, and how it changed the lives of everyone involved in the investigation and handling of the evidence of that incident as well as those who were witnesses to it. Both in the military as well as those of the local population.

The story of "The Incident at Roswell" begins some thirty years later at the 30 year reunion of members of the famed 509th Bomb Wing of the 8th USAAF the only group of bombers who were armed with atomic bombs in the world at that time back in the late 1940's. It was the 509th who's B-29 bombers dropped the two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki in August 1945 that ended the Second World War.

At the reunion is retired Maj. Jesse Marcel,Kyle MacLachian, who was the intelligence officer of that bomber wing back in 1947 when the Roswell crash happened. Sick and dying Jesse want's to finally get to the bottom of what happened back then and make it public before he dies and tries to get as much information from the soldiers airmen and civilians who were there and knows what happened but have been too afraid to talk about it all these years.

At the time of the crash in July 1947 Jesse and his commanding officer at the air base in Roswell Col. Blanchard, John M. Jackson, came to the conclusion that the debris that was found outside of Roswell at the Brazel ranch was out of this world and very possibly that of an extraterrestrial space craft.

Col. Blanchard released the startling story "US Army Captures a Crashed Flying Saucer outside of Roswell NM" that made headlines all over the world. The next day Gen. Ramey, Matthew Falson, arrived from D.C and told both Col. Blanchard and Maj. Jesse Marcel to change their story from a "flying saucer" to an army weather balloon crashing in the desert outside of Roswell.

Jesse was made out to look like a fool and incompetent with him having to stand before newsmen and news photographers looking like a jerk holding pieces of a weather balloon and making it look like he didn't know the difference between that and an alien spaceship. It also hurt Jesse that both his wife Vy and young son Jesse Jr. (Kim Greist & J.D Daniels), who knew that Jesse was telling the truth, were both made to swallow that made up story and having to see him humiliated in front of the American public and his friends as well.

At the reunion Jesse finally gets to the truth about what happened from many of those who were involved in the investigation and the cover up of the evidence at Roswell, as well as those UFO investigators who were investigating it then in 1977. In the end he dies in peace, Jesse died some nine years later in 1986, feeling that hopefully in the near future the truth would come out and prove, once in for all, that he was right about what happened at Roswell back in 1947.

What really happened at Roswell in 1947 we may never know if we have to count on the US government and military to release the evidence about that incident. In 1994 the US Air Force released a statement that the people who claimed that a space ship crashed at Roswell and that there were a number of alien bodies recovered, one of the aliens was reported to have survived, mistook that for the US Air force's Operation Mogul. Mogul had high altitude balloons drop dummies in parachutes to see if humans can survive those high parachutes drops in the future.

The paper trail totally disputes that claim since Operation Mogul was conducted in the early to mid 1950's years after "The Roswell Incident" was said to have taken place. In fact it's "The Roswell Incident", not Operation Mogul, that's supported by the newspapers magazines radio and television reports at that time in the fateful summer of 1947. The Then Secretary of Defense James Vincent Forrestal, Eugune Roche, was reported to have had a major hand in the Roswell Investagation back in 1947 that at the time was classified above Top Secret by the newly formed CIA. Within two years Forrestal lost his mind and was committed to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington D.C after suffering a severe mental breakdown. Forrestal later fell or jumped out of his 16th floor hospital room window to his death in the early morning hours of May 22, 1949. Was it what he saw at Roswell, and forced to keep silent about it, that drove him to kill himself?

What exactly did happened outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947? The American people as well as the world may never know. What's positive about the "Incident at Roswell" is that those in charge of finding out what happened, then as well as now, will never let it see the light of day. Those in charge will continue to cover up the "Roswell Incident" and keep it covered up for as long as they have the power and authority to do so. And nothing short of a massive landing of alien space crafts in all the major capitals and cities on earth, to show the people on earth that they in fact do exist and are real, will finally make the US Government reveal what really happened at Roswell almost sixty years ago.

Having been privy to many of the related details in this fine made-for-tv movie, i feel that 'Roswell' is probably the most well-researched film dealing with the subject of close encounters and linked government conspiracies that one can find, and i recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone interested in this subject. Further, allow me to direct interested viewers to the similar, if largely dramatized, 1980 film 'Hangar 18'.