Alien Nation (1988)

Alien Nation (1988)

A race of alien beings known as newcomers crashland on Earth and become the newest immigrants in Los Angeles. When some of them are found executed a bigoted detective and his rookie newcomer sidekick investigate. Alien Nation is a buddy cop/sci-fi hybrid that contains a lot of the usual 80s action flick cliches; the burned out, alcoholic cop, gratuitous car chases and stranger in a strange land analogies are all very familiar. The sci-fi spin does give it all a little freshness however, and although the racial metaphor is a little clumsy, Caan and Patinkin's deadpan delivery show some decent chemistry together with some amusing odd couple comedy. Unfortunately the script is purely by the numbers including a couple of major plot elements that are just sci-fi mumbo jumbo. Terence Stamp also might as well have phoned in his performance as the villain leading up to a particularly weak conclusion which drags an otherwise entertaining film back down to mediocrity.

Not bad considering it's an 80s mash of two usually unbearable film genres, science fiction and buddy cop movies. I don't regret seeing it, but it's not brilliant and I don't know if I will watch it again of my own volition.