Decent sci-fi, could have been retooled

Rating: 6/10 (8 February 2010)

Directors and writers love allegory, because it allows them to make "significant" films while delivering the goods for audiences. Thus an anti-blacklist message is slipped into the water supply by way of a Gary Cooper western ("High Noon"). Then later it's turned into a sci-fi movie ("Outland") with very little allegory. But that's not to say they haven't tried it in sci-fi; "Enemy Mine" and "Alien Nation" beat "District 9" to this particular punchbowl about 20 years ago, basically rehashing the old race/buddy-cop formula from films like "In the Heat of the Night" for the sci-fi audience. That black people would probably prefer not to be allegorized by way of hideous mutant freaks has hardly been questioned.
But an attempt at an interesting sci-fi premise is still better than the lazy premises we usually see. The people who made this movie actually seem more enamored of Verhoeven's style in "Starship Troopers" than any of those other films. But there's an odd clash of humor and drama here in my opinion that really doesn't always work. It starts out as a mockumentary and gradually morphs into a rather conventional narrative/action-film. In the process, identification is built but satire is unhinged.
Honestly, although the mockumentary style is interesting to apply to sci-fi, I thought it was pretty poorly done here. First of all there's the fact that it drops away and returns seemingly at the whim of the director. This dulls the impact of both the documentary and non-documentary sequences, because there's no sustained illusion of either objective or subjective reality. And then too much of the documentary parts are strictly informational; you wonder if anyone but a 5 year old in this alternate-Earth would really need some of this basic information about the arrival of the aliens.
The implausibility continues, and actually amps up, as the film progresses. Our hero, presented as a dorky bureaucrat, turns out to be the reincarnation of Jean Claude Van Damme. He thinks nothing of using his cell phone or walking into a fast food joint, and although all the military-police in town are supposedly searching for him he always eludes them on foot. He easily escapes from a high-security research center, and then spends the next half hour trying to convince his alien friend that it's impossible to get back in. Of course he decides to try it, and then breaks back in even more easily because his employers never thought to change the codes. Escape is not difficult a second time, because even though the evil corporation knows that he's inside they don't bother to close the garage or post more than one guard there.
These are all just bumps in the road; the major disappointment is that what promises to be both a stylish and intelligent sci-fi film instead degenerates into typical popcorn action. In this way it's similar to films like Alex Proyas' "Dark City." The mixture of satire and sentiment leaves a bad taste in my mouth -- too much is done with an eye to the momentary payoff and not the larger structure. It feels like the project was rushed, that there were good ideas in here but the script needed more work.