L'armée du silence

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.

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.

With some of the most wooden acting ever seen on screen, derivative plot, aliens and spaceships that have come straight from central casting, this film is one you should avoid at all costs. The only thing that keeps your interest are the explosions and that is cleary where the money went.

The Sender is godawful Z-Grade SciFi with cloying, grating intentions, a script with War Of The World's type ambitions that was given an allowance of like ten bucks to come into fruition, and the result is a windows 98 screensaver with a fraction of a pulse. It's a shame because they scored two dope actors in Michael Madsen and R. Lee Ermey, but as good as they are they're both sheepishly notorious for appearing in bottom feeding diarrhea like this to put food on the table. Madsen strains his tear ducts as the sympathetic father whose adorable daughter has mysterious connections to extraterrestrial activity from years before. He's on the run from all kinds of government folks including Ermey's gonzo, overzealous military asshole, a one dimensional fire and brimstone go-getter who hunts them six ways to Sunday. That's about all you'll get, besides cameos from Dyan Cannon and golden oldie Robert Vaughn, as well as some Fisher Price worthy UFO effects and an all round lack of pride in the craft from everyone involved. Poo.

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