Coming to a country near you

Rating: 8/10 (16 November 2016)

Denis Villeneuve is aiming for a high brow, intellectually stimulating sci fi film. It had all the tropes of an alien invasion film. You might think Independence Day or The Day the Earth Stood Still or even 2001: A Space Odyssey but the director keeps his cards closely to his chest while leaving little clues here and there in the space/time continuum.
Twelve alien ships land around the globe. Dr Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is the linguist expert brought in by the military in the USA to communicate with the aliens in the ship that is over Montana.
Physicist Dr Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) has also been recruited to find out how the spaceship has travelled through the vast reaches of space but both are really tasked to find out why they have arrived.
The various governments and their associated military are convinced that this is an invasion and some of them have become extremely nervous with the alien's intentions and the slow pace in understanding what is going on. Before long nations that were communicating with each other suddenly cease sharing information and throwing down ultimatums to the visitors.
Dr Banks makes a breakthrough and finds out that the aliens have a complex visual language but the meaning of the words are open to interpretation which is not helped by a media frenzy based on misinformation and half truths. Dr Banks is also affected by scenes of her daughter who died young through a rare disease but those memories might actually help her to deal with the aliens.
Even though the events depicted are on a global scale, Villeneuve keeps the human drama on a smaller more abstract level and lets the film unravel like a mystery. I guess there is something a little Christopher Nolanesque about the resolution. There is clever and eerie use of music and sounds. With the appearance of the aliens, you can understand why people are nervous. I found myself thinking back to Independence Day or the television series Torchwood: Children of Earth for sinister motives by the aliens as they were shrouded in smoke behind a glass wall.