The Arrival

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.

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.

I was a late getting to the theater to see 'The Arrival'. Then I had to go through the concession stand crowd. When I finally reached the theater -the screen was engrossed by a huge satellite disk and there was some guy talking. "Damn," I thought. "I just missed the start of the movie." It wasn't three seconds after that realization that I had another one. "This isn't the movie." It was a commercial for one of the large multi-billion dollar phone companies. Talk about false scares.

Some people have called 'The Arrival' a thinking man's science fiction movie. While the jury is still out on that, I will say it's not stupid either. It is however one more of those 'one man saves the world' flicks. Which are never terribly realistic, but on their own terms, entertain. Charlie Sheen plays Zane Zaminski. A smart, but soon-to-be paranoid astrophysicist who has the slithery Godian (Ron Silver) for a boss. One day watching the satellites some anomaly passes his screen. Suddenly the search is on. What was it? WHO was it? Not letting the subject go gets him fired from his job and deeper and deeper he journeys into the paranoia.

The Arrival is one part use your mind, two parts conspiracy theory. As Zane takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of things and find out who's involved and to what lengths they'll go to suppress everything. Soon we start to see elements straight out of the X Files. The story has it's own set of implausibilities, but things move at such a pace that there isn't much time to question them. Zane knows something is going on and the deeper he digs the more we find out. It's all about the ride. Could one man really stop such things from happening? Probably not, but that doesn't stop 'The Arrival' from being a fun time.

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.