Amazon.com video review:
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.
A routine cop thriller with a comedic sci-fi twist, Alien
Nation> has two things working in its favor: Caan and Patinkin form
a memorable duo, and the basic premise--as conceived by Rockne S.
O'Bannon (who later developed the film as a TV series)--intelligently
accounts for the sociological impact of an alien population. The subtle
point is made that humans are extraordinary beings who squander their
potential, and the evil of drugs--as dealt by a social-climbing
Newcomer played by Terence Stamp--leads to a crisis that threatens to
generate global intolerance. These points are well presented in a
context of overly familiar plotting and standard-issue sarcasm. It's
entertaining for a brisk 90 minutes, but in its attempt to be widely
appealing, Alien Nation glosses over issues that might have made
it more uniquely provocative. --Jeff Shannon
