The Arrival (1996)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1996
	Director: David Twohy (Pitch Black, Riddick)
	Actors: Charlie Sheen (Two and a Half Men TV-series), Lindsay Crouse, Richard Schiff
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 23.12.2016, VOD, 42" TV
Synopsis: Zane Zaminsky (Sheen) is a radio-astronomer looking for extra-terrestrial life. He looses his job after detecting something, and then becomes obsessed with finding answers, an obsession that will lead him to Mexico.
Review: Not to be confused with the recent release Arrival, this movie is 20 years old and features Charlie Sheen, but probably the title and main actor motivated me to watch it, on top of the fact that it is an Alien Invasion story, a sub-genre that I like. Indeed even though the story sounds at first like the one of Robert Zemeckis' Contact with Jodie Foster, it is treated very differently, more like an Action Thriller than a mystical quest. In 1996 Charlie Sheen was far from his debuts in Red Dawn and his very serious role in Platoon, but not yet the comedy monster of Two and a Half Men although he had already starred in the two Hot Shot! movies. I have been watching a lot of his TV-series lately so I found it hard to take him seriously in the movie at first, but then his convincing acting made it work. He is in fact quite at ease in this semi-serious role. As already mentioned, the story approach is a kind of Action-SF Thriller, meaning not much reflexion about our place in the Universe but more investigation and plenty of discoveries and twists that keep you well entertained through the almost two hours of the movie. A bit like John Carpenter's 1992 Big Trouble in Little China but with more outdoors and less ass-kicking. After all Sheen plays a scientist. Screenplay writer / director David Thowy is probably more than partly responsible for a movie well put together. Four years later he went on to deliver the cult B Pitch Black and create the action hero Riddick at the same time (embodied by Vin Diesel). I have yet to watch his directing debut Timescape (1992).
Rating: 6 /10