ROSWELL

 
*

STARRING: Kyle MacLachlan, Martin Sheen, Arthur Hiller, Kim Greist, Charles Martin Smith, Peter MacNichol

 
1994, 120 Minutes, Directed by: Jeremy Kagan

 
The JFK of saucer films. Except director Kagan (whoever he is!) is no Oliver Stone and whereas Stone made you believe (even for a fleeting moment) that Kennedy was indeed blasted away by hordes of Cuban gunmen hired by the CIA, Roswell does nothing of the sort.

Whether you actually like this film depends on whether you believe in UFOs and that there is a government conspiracy to keep it under wraps.

Question: if one out of ten Americans already claim that they have been kidnapped by aliens like this film informs us, then what point is there in the US government trying to hide all evidence of the existence of UFOs? To prevent wide-spread panic? Would there really be wide-spread panic and social unrest like Independence Day and this film suggest?

If you don't take this sort of paranoia seriously, then this film (originally made for American television) is simply too straight-forward, dull and slow to warrant a rental. Even if you do take stuff like Communion and The X-Files seriously, then you're better off reading Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World, a level-headed take on the whole UFO phenomenon . . .

(Roswell is based on the book UFO Crash at Roswell by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt.)