Movie – Alien nation

Movie – Alien nation
Score : 7/10 provisional)
Year : 1988
Director: Graham Baker
Country : USA
Language : English
Duration: 1h31
Writers: Rockne S. O'bannon

Of note: this is a mature movie, in spite of not being overly graphic, certain adult topics are discussed and shown.

1991 : An alien race known as ''the Newcomers'' who landed on Earth a few years ago are now slowly integrating into human society after years in quarantine. Very gifted, these 300,000 aliens have learned our language, adopted human sounding names and have to find their positions in society. 

Mandy Patinkin hidden behind alien makeup, is Sam "George" Francisco, a newcomer. He's a police detective who teams up with Matthew Sykes (James Caan), investigating the former's previous murder. 

Blending uniquely science-fiction and police investigation, Alien Nation deals with racism through the plot involving these alien newcomers, and both human and alien character flaws, as well as qualities. 

Like many other science-fiction movies, it presents a case of human society and offers food for thought through imagery, and intelligent dialogues. 

Some humourous moments break the tension and help ease the general atmosphere, and the story unfolds fluently. 

I like the makeup, and the funny names the newcomers have taken : Sam Francisco and Rudyard Kipling being the best of them... 

I really like Adam Greenberg's cinematography, which was approached in a very unique way to answer the challenges he met during his research for this movie. He created a special lighting mood, which hid the most gruesome aspects of this film in shadows, thus making it far more tolerable to me than many other movies have dealt such topics before and since. The violence isn't completely gone, mind you, but it's not as graphic as it could've been. 
However, there are a couple scenes that do have horrific aspects to them, so if you are really sensitive, you should avoid this movie. 

I found out that the initial score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who worked on many other projects, including Star Trek. I am quite curious as to how a score initially meant for one movie, then another, and rejected on both, ends up used for a 1990's spy movie, and how illogical it is to use science-fiction pieces - including their names - almost as illogical in releasing this score in 2005 as ''alien nation soundtrack'', when the music therein was never included in the movie, but one by Curt Sobel - who's score was never released on cd... how weird!

I do have to say, Curt's music didn't even fully register in my mind - I cannot recall if it was any good nor if it had any personality. I did wait a bit too long to compose my review, and several movies are now garbled upon last week's Alien nation viewing. Thus, I'll have to come back to it later on to better comment about. This is why my provisional score for the movie is 7*. 

To be... continued and revised. 

I will, in the interim, mention that in 1989 a spin off tv show continued the story and the main two characters were played by Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint. I have seen small pieces of it but never followed the show, afraid to get sick as the newcomers are carnivorous. 
In the movie, this is said, and we barely see any food. In the show, as far as I recall, it's shown a little more. 
Perhaps a certain wife of mine shall preview said show and let me know if I can bare it - she said she will : isn't she a great wife, checking out if I can watch anything or if I'd get sick? I'm telling you that she is and that's it. You'll have to take my word for that.