Ah 1996, the year when Mr. Charlie Sheen announced he was a born again Christian (yea I was surprised too, but it's on Wikipedia so it has to be true). Now of course, the years leading up to '96 were anything but Christian...unless cocaine and high priced hookers are allowed somewhere in the Bible, which would make it the best religion ever! 1996 would also mark the release of possibly the last good Charlie Sheen movie ever, "The Arrival".
How would I describe "The Arrival" in one sentence...Take one big slab of "They Live", a dose of "X-Files", and a small dash of "The Thing" and you get "The Arrival". Clearly, writer-director David Twohy (of "Critters 2: The Main Course" fame!!! Oh, and "Pitch Black") has a huge hard-on for John Carpenter. Well, he couldn't have picked a better director to emulate.
The movie itself is almost relevant again because it revolves around a secret alien conspiracy to increase greenhouse gases and warm the earth to make it habitable for alien invaders, who already live among us in disguise! The aliens run NASA, through
This is basically the Charlie Sheen show, and he does a good job of playing a paranoid geek. For some unexplained reason though, he is shown without his shirt on far too much. Sheen was clearly putting on weight after dropping the coke habit and it showed. The other real standout for me was Ron Silver. He showed some real range. Not only did he play the evil alien in disguise head of NASA (i think), but he also played an evil alien in disguise Mexican cop with a sweet 'stache (the makeup use was brilliant, I am talking "Soul Man" brilliant). Lindsay Crouse also plays an environmental scientist who gets caught up in the whole shebang in Mexico. I bring her up because she actually propositions Sheen's character, who thankfully turns her down. Nevermind the fact that Crouse looks like she is 20 years older than Sheen, but she kinda looks like a dude. Never have I been happier to see a movie character turn down sex.
Oh, Teri Polo and some black kid are also in the movie adding "The Thing" like tensions because Sheen doesn't know who is/isn't an alien as the movie progresses. Overall, this is a very solid movie that in my opinion got lost amongst all the "X-Files" hype of the mid-90s when everyone was trying to do something alien related. "The Arrival"'s actual extraterrestrials aren't visually spectacular, but the movie really isn't about what they look like and is more about Sheen's journey to figure everything out and keep his sanity at the same time. I would highly recommend giving it a rental.
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