The Invasion

A veteran, mid-level European director comes to the States after his biggest continental success, a powerful recounting of the final weeks of perhaps the 20th century's most notorious and vilified man, and after dutifully remaking Invasion of the Body Snatchers, what follows? The suits take it away from him. This is what happened to The Invasion, action producer extraordinaire Joel Silver’s newest Warner Bros./Village Roadshow extravaganza, an empty-headed but viscerally entertaining alien invasion thriller that doesn’t live up to the Don Siegel, Philip Kaufman or Abel Ferrera version but isn’t really a car wreck.

Although a third of the movie was re-shot following the January ‘06 wrap by none other than James McTeigue, who directed V For Vendetta, also from an overcooked Wachowski Brothers script (they did the Silver-ordered rewrite after principal photography), The Invasion isn’t pure hack work. Nicole Kidman dutifully plays a D.C. psychoanalyst and mother, her ex-husband (Jeremy Northam) having abandoned the family for the top job at the CDC in Atlanta.   Her anti-depressant intake is so high that she can’t respond to the charms of Ben (a miscast Daniel Craig), her platonic scientist friend who takes her to dinners at the Czechoslovakian embassy where she can announce grandly to Russian diplomats that she’s a “postmodern feminist,” a line that draws an unintentional laugh from a small segment of the general audience and a dull, blank stare from just about everyone else.

After a space shuttle crash leaves “contaminated” debris across the red states and unleashes alien spores across America that quickly infect Northam and other CDC officials, Americans are ordered to get vaccinations to avoid a deadly and mysterious “flu.” Spouses, children, and employers become emotionless automatons, and Nicole Kidman starts shooting people, hitting her pod- infected ex with hammers, and drinking absurd amounts of Mountain Dew. What are Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, and Jeffery Wright doing in this movie when they only inhabit non-characters? The opportunities wasted are copious, especially in this conformist post 9/11 American political environment in which we all live

                                                       Brandon Harris