STARRING:
James Caan, Mandy Patinkin, Terence Stamp, Kevyn Major Howard, Leslie
Bevis, Peter Jason, George Jeneky, Jeff Kober, Rober Aaron Brown, Tony
Simotes
1988, 94 Minutes, Directed by Graham Baker
Description:
They get drunk on sour milk. They have two hearts and bald, spotted heads.
They're highly intelligent, but if you drop them in seawater they'll melt
into a puddle of goop. They're "Newcomers," and they arrived as refugees
in a massive alien slave-ship, quarantined for three years and then
reluctantly accepted as citizens of Earth. To some humans--including
seasoned Los Angeles cop Matt Sykes (James Caan)--the Newcomers are
unwelcome "slags." Sykes's own virulent "speciesism" intensifies when
Newcomer thugs kill his partner, but he sees logic in teaming up with Sam
Francisco (Mandy Patinkin), the first Newcomer detective in the LAPD.
Francisco's Newcomer knowledge is vital to their investigation of an alien
drug ring, and a friendship grows from life-or-death circumstances.
-
Amazon.com
Interesting concept
(that of aliens crash-landing on Earth and being assimilated into human
culture) is given the most superficial of treatments.
This is a straightforward
buddy cop movie with a few science fiction elements thrown in. It could
have been a lot more interesting than it turned out to be, but instead one
sits through the entire movie counting off the clichés.
(Alien
Nation later spawned a television series of the same name that also
didn’t seem to transcend the buddy cop movie genre despite playing
around with a few of the possibilities that the full-length motion picture
offered, but never pursued.)
