They Live (1988)

	Also Known As: Invasion Los Angeles (France)
	Year of first release: 1988
	Director: John Carpenter (The Fog, Halloween, Ghosts of Mars)
	Actors: Roddy Piper, Keith David (The Thing), Meg Foster, Peter Jason (Alien Nation, Arachnophobia)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Action, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 26.08.2015, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Unemployed and homeless, John Nada (Piper) finds out that the people are being ruled by an alien race and influenced by subliminal messages in advertisement and television.
Review: This movie came to my mind twice recently, once because it was released in a new Blu-ray edition and once because of the passing of its main actor (and Wrestling star) Roddy Piper some weeks ago. I am a big fan of John Carpenter and own all of his movies in DVD. Very slowly I upgrade some to Blu-ray (I started with The Thing of course). In the case of They Live it was worth it: the image and sound quality on this edition are excellent. Note that a new cover was prepared for the occasion, see at the end of this post for the American and British versions (note the differences). The satirical aspect of the movie was not lost to me, I enjoyed a lot Carpenter criticizing the consumer society of the 80's, what would he have to say nowadays?! I also appreciated the reach of subliminal messages like "Obey", "Watch T.V.", "Spend Money" or "Consume and reproduce", and of course the cult sentence by the hero: "I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I'm all out of bubblegum" they precedes the famous 5-minute fist fight over a pair of sunglasses. This fight happens because the character of Franck (David) refuses to simply put the glasses on, symbolizing people who strongly refuse to see the truth. It was true about consumerism in the 80's, today we could say it is also true about the climate change for example. This is why this movie is considered to be left-winged. I found the pace very slow, actually not much happens to fill the 93 short minutes of the movie, but the simple synthesizer music composed by Carpenter and its mastership of the image framing make it pleasant enough to watch. Moreover, more than once the viewer is taken surprised by the events, until the very end.
Rating: 7 /10