The Invasion (2007) Starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright, Josef Sommer, Roger Rees, Jeff Wincott, Jackson Bond, Stephanie Berry, Veronica Cartwright, Susan Floyd, Adam LeFevre, Joanna Merlin, Celia Weston, Eric Benjamin, Alexis Raben, Field Blauvelt, Rhonda Overby, Cloie Wyatt Taylor.
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
Running time: 99 minutes.
Rating: PG-13
"All you have to do is nothing. That's all we're asking"
Halloween after a mysterious space shuttle crash in Washington, DC. A severe flu epidemic suddenly breaks out at the same time. But then so do about a thousand other less interesting yet still important things competing for attention in people's daily lives.
Single mom and prosperous psychiatrist Dr.Carol Bennell (Kidman) is presented with continual evidence that people are just not themselves (more like reflections of themselves on an apparent combination of Ritalin and Ecstasy) following the crash. The actress playing the lead character doesn't look completely like herself either. The eyebrows especiallly look bizarre. Movie stars don't do anything the normal way and I guess that very much includes ageing.
Having found alien gunk on her son Oliver's hand after trick or treating Carol takes it in for examination to her doctor boyfriend Ben Driscoll (Craig) and his lab buddy Steven Galeano (Wright). This instead of just dismissing it as part of another brat's Halloween costume or some weird new candy like 99 percent of the rest of parents would and like the other characters initially do.
At first that and everything else does seem easily dismissable particularly when officials come forward (led by Carol's ex-husband portrayed by Northam) and say that all the weirdness is just a really bad flu virus. Damage control is always best when plausible facts fill the vacuum of speculation. In this day and age the least deferential journalists also tend to get reduced to the status of bloggers making it easier than ever for any slick person in a tasteful suit who cultivates TV talking heads to dupe the public.
That is the underlying theme of this version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It is not reflective of the xenophobia of the original 1950s classic nor of the angst of big city living of the 1978 version. This is about sinister forces engaged in a power grab and how detailed the pattern of their deception can be in obtaining it. It is also about how we might fool ourselves into thinking it is not happening or that it won't be so bad if it does.
The aliens get you when you fall asleep so the longer you stay awake the longer you resist. In that case don't see this movie or they'll takeover your body after a halh hour in. You will also be able to avoid seeing scenes of them puking in coffee to infect the people that drink it. If you do see it (or read what I just wrote) you may come out avoiding Starbucks for awhile.
Yet aside from the gross way they mix beverages the aliens don't look particularly bad when compared with some of the "normal" characters in the film. A thoroughly garish exchange at an embassy party between these kinds of normal people suggests turning them into aliens (after a gross process of cellular condescension which makes people look like overtoasted marshmallows) might not be such bad idea.
A very different exchange shortly thereafter indicates that the aliens might prove more effective (or at least more determined) at collecting census data at least.
Go to the worst poverty stricken areas of Washington, D.C. (I drove through it once with the car doors locked about a decade ago and I have never seen anything like it) if you dare and tell me if what the aliens are doing would depreciate things at all there. Though the film is set in D.C. it never goes beyond the nice area surrounding the government buildings.
By the end of the movie we see that the aliens have caused world peace to break out. They have also begun distributing anti-HIV vaccines for free to third world countries and are in the process of curing every other socio and geo political difficulty we ever had in one fell swoop. Those sick bastards! These extra-terrestrials apparently have even found a cure for perspiration.
The price of course is that we lose our humanity and the ones who cannot be converted must be exterminated. The Soviets under Stalin actually did this to Polish intelligentsia in their infamous Katyn massacre in the 1940s.
After about 45 minutes into the film it really starts to meander. I found myself looking at every shot hoping there would be some kind of an opening for it to end. But my DVD player has an OSD feature and looking at the back of the cover the DVD gave me the running time. Thus for more than half the duration of what was being shown I was counting it down.
The Invasion AKA Nicole Kidman's Umpteenth Bomb has quite a few things going for it including its charming and attractive (though not as much as she used to be) leading lady. It is a remake of a story proven to have popular and critical appeal more than once. It even has the new James Bond (Daniel Craig) but that is hardly an indication of anything positive from a box-office standpoint since Craig's films have tended to underperform. Hollywood decided movegoers would like Craig before they themselves could decide.
The Golden Compass also featured Kidman and Craig. That overproduced monstrosity did not just lose money it absolutely haemorrhaged money.
Ms.Kidman's people must be wondering what it will take for her to have a hit release again. She was in bad need of one after how much of a bomb Stepford Wives was. As she walks around in see-through clothes in her character's palacial home at the beginning of this one she looks like she is getting desperate by attempts at utilising cheap cheesecake to please male fans.
Ms.Kidman is capable of much more than merely being famous as Tom Cruise's ex. When this was made she was also two decades separated from having made atrocius films like BMX Bandits, Nightmaster and Windrider in her native Australia and was at one point an A-list star in her early years in Hollywood on Tom Cruise's arm.
Notes:
I am proud to say this title was available at my local library within a year of its theatrical release as many recent films are. But my sense is that some may not feel like going the distance of watching the whole thing if they don't pay for it and then become driven to get their moneys worth.
I wonder if there is a certain brainwashing that goes with rentals along the lines of "I paid for this I WILL ENJOY IT whether I like it or not!". I myself do not have it and wine and complain about things I have not enjoyed on the extremely rare occasions when I pay to see them.