A Five Star Science-Fiction Classic
Someone must defend the exquisite "The Invasion", which was a huge critical and commercial disaster when released in 2007. Personally, I think it was way ahead of its' time, and it is quite ironic that most people are waking up to its' genius on DVD.
Nicole Kidman, in perhaps her most restrained performance plays 'a woman against the world'. Holding onto her sanity while the rest of the world around her are converted literally into zombies, she plays a simple woman who has to deal with some extraordinary circumstances. I found her insomniac performance while teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown while trapped in the convenience store, to be one of her greatest screen moments.
Its moments like that which define "The Invasion". This is NOT a film for special effects afficionados. In fact, I can't recall even one significant special effect or 'things blowing up'. What I got instead was a quiet, intelligent science fiction thriller that relied upon dialog and...
Yet another remake of a classic story.
Every era seems to have a connection to the "Body Snatchers" as there have been about 4 films so far that are based on the classic tale and it has spawned numerous similarily themed films and silly rip-offs (Invasion of the Pod People).
The first version and arguably the best is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) which dealt with McCarthism. The next take on the classic came in 1978 with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and has become my favorite version of the tale. It focused on our need to be emotional even when it makes no sense, hence, the appearance of Leonard Nimoy in the film who built a career playing Spock, part emotionless Vulcan and part human, on Star Trek. Then there came Body...
Nearly Deplotted, We Are Gatthered Here...
This version of Jack Finney's book Invasion of the Body Snatchers had some promise, but ultimately missed the opportunity. Apparently the studio didn't like the cut director Oliver Hirschbiegel delivered. My suspicion is that the original film, which was completed in 2006, was probably more coherent. The Wachowski brothers were hired for massive rewriting and James McTeigue directed the new scenes. The result is a film that takes an unexpected turn for the worse.
What's new in this rendition is that the victims of the alien virus aren't replaced by duplicates. Instead, the virus just acts within their own bodies, changing them so that they act as one organism-- we're talking a slightly nicer version of the borg from Star Trek. The idea of a more benevolent invader would have been a fresh interesting take and was where this movie was headed before the hack job. It would have been more insidiously...
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