The Sender

THE SENDER is a cheesy and unintentionally funny late '90s sci-fi thriller, clearly made to tap into the success of THE X-FILES around that time. Hell, it even has Steven Williams ('Mr. X' from the show) present, complete with ridiculously dyed white hair.

Sadly this is a goofy messy of a movie, only worth watching to laugh at. Michael Madsen continues a trend of appearing in cheap B-movie action flicks and gives what can only be termed a wooden performance. There are some surprising faces in support, including Robert Vaughn and R. Lee Ermey, but it's no surprise that the characters they're playing are so stereotyped.

THE SENDER adopts an action template throughout, with lots of senseless shoot-outs and some ridiculous vehicle chases to enjoy. Also, you can play 'spot Madsen's stuntman' throughout. Worst of all is the female alien, who turns up wearing a silver lame dress and glitter wig. At this point, you just know you're not going to be able to take this film seriously anymore.

I can't remember why I started watching this movie, but some where during it I lost the will to live! It may have been during the appalling car chase sequences, you have to watch it to see just how bad they are. Can someone tell Hollywood that a Porche 911 will be way faster than a GMC truck on a country road, on any road. It may have been the terrible special effects, even for a low budget movie they were poor, leftovers from the 1970's possibly. The dialogue was trite, the story line infantile, face it there's good sci-fi and not so good sci-fi but this is bargain basement sci-fi. The support cast, Steven Williams was totally unconvincing, R. Lee Ermey was hamming it up with abandon, Dyan Cannon was on auto pilot, of the support Robert Vaughn was the best but then he was pretty much playing Robert Vaughn. Of the leads Shelli Lether looked to be an eye candy distraction and little else and Michael Madsen most of the time looked embarrassed, as he delivered his dialogue with a look of a man who's agent had signed him up for this. All in all, I saw it for free on a satellite movie channel and felt cheated.

Granted, this isn't the greatest sci-fi film ever made, but it's not the worst, either. Yes, the plot is derivative, but how often do you see an original plot these days? Sure, it's not an excuse, but in a small picture like this it all works out. The weakest thing about this movie is that the whole "wow" in characters' reactions to the aliens is missing. However, I like the warm feeling this relatively low-budget flick gives you, and the action scenes are not bad at all.

8/10

Wow! This is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. And I don't mean that in a good way. (grin) Once you get past the endless car chases and senseless shoot-em-ups, you have to shake your head in amazement at just how badly this film was botched. I mean, it had the stench of rotting cheese you could smell all the way back to the alien's home planet.

If I had to guess, I'd say this was a first-time effort for the director, the screenwriter, AND the musical effects people. It just reeked of "We have NO clue what we're doing", which made it pretty darn funny, once you got over the expectation that you were going to see a "real movie".

It's difficult to capture the essence of how this film plays out, but I'd characterize it best by saying, ...what would happen if you got a bunch of actors together, didn't let them read a script, then handed them their lines one page at a time, just before shooting each scene?

They'd have no idea what was going on. They'd ask, "what's my motivation here?", to which the director would respond, "forget motivation, just say your lines". And that's exactly what the "actors" here do, 90% of the time. They just say lines. They don't act, they don't react, they don't respond to what's going on around them, there's no emotion. It's just bizarre. And the movie is full of these "WTF? moments". I kept asking myself, "Are these human beings, or zombies?". The one exception being R. Lee Ermy, who goes postal at the drop of a hat, with no provocation whatsoever.

I'm baffled how someone could get funding to make a film this poorly, but I'd guess they didn't get to make any more. So here's your opportunity to catch a real schlock-fest. If you go into it with no expectations; like lots of action, with no suspense; don't mind gaping plot holes and a senseless script, you could be in for an amusing hour and a half of shaking your head and saying "unfreaking-believable!". I can't believe I watched the WHOLE thing. (smile)

Love Michael Madsen! Unfortunately, if you take out ALL the chase scenes and ALL the explosions, and ALL the gunfights, the movie last a good 15 minutes. You want action, you get action, you want a story or some sort of recognizable plot look elsewhere. It's a time killer on a rainy Saturday afternoon.