I Come In Peace (1990)

[ronnierocketago]

"Jack Kane thought he's busted every breed of crook on Earth. He has." - The awesome tagline

I COME IN PEACE (1990) - ***1/2

Months back, I had a really fun time with Mark L. Lester's SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO, which I reviewed at the request of AwardsDaily Forums member CitizenDarko. SHOWDOWN was overstuffed with cliches, but with some good memorable scenes, great chemistry between leads Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee, and under ninety minutes, SHOWDOWN is terrific with cheap beer and greasy pizza on a friday night. So today, I'm checking out another Dolph Lundgren B-actioneer from the early 1990s in I COME IN PEACE, which I actually may have enjoyed more.

First take the ironic title I COME IN PEACE. You don't usually expect such a title for a movie about a not-so-pacifist space alien (Matthias Hues) killing people and using their bodies to harvest drugs. At least I don't. Throughout the movie, the villain who looks like Christopher Lambert's giant retarded albino brother repeatedly recites "I Come in Peace."[/i] Does he say those four words as a joke, or like most immigrants, he doesn't grasp the English tongue? The movie never explains this nor his extra-terrestrial background beyond vague notions, which I appreciate because otherwise unless it was really original or provacative, I wouldn't have cared. Besides the possibility that this creature uses this term freely without understanding the meaning is rather humorous. Also it sets up Dolph's slick one-liner: "But you go in pieces, asshole."

Interestingly, outside of America I COME IN PEACE was released under the generic-ass label DARK ANGEL, which begs the inevitable question: What did those territories title that Jessica Alba TV show? BABE ANGEL? RAVEN ANGEL? BUBBLEHEAD ANGEL? JAMES CAMERON'S FLOP?

Before the Outer Space stuff, I COME IN PEACE is much like SHOWDOWN dogma to the buddy cop paradigm. Dolph once again plays the maverick officer who's paired up with a straightlace by-the-book partner (Brian Benben) on a case involving drugs and murder. As I wrote in my SHOWDOWN review, Dolph was typecasted as a stoic meathead after ROCKY IV, but when allowed to try to act human, he does possess a certain charm that most folks usually gloss over. I guess you could always ponder the logic of the LAPD hiring an Aryan-looking guy with broad shoulders and thick European accent, but since it didn't bother me in either picture, who gives a shit?

What immediately differs from SHOWDOWN is how the filmmakers behind I COME IN PEACE respect their audience's basic intelligence enough to allow the plot to begin with three unrelated threads, until they unfold together as one. First Mr. I Come in Peace arrives and turns a normal Christmas carols CD into a deadly aerial weapon like those flying balls in the PHANTASM series. Second a robbery where a crew seizes all the cocaine from a police storehouse and then bomb it. Finally Dolph on a doomed police sting where his partner gets murdered by a gang and he swears vengeance. Note that such plotting amounted for 95% of the Hollywood action cinema from this epoch.

I especially like the many little creative touches that the crew make to what by 1990 was already a hollowed-out subgenre. The gang is something fantastical almost out of Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS, The White Boys are all machine gun-totting/drug-dealing white-collar snobbish yuppies who operate out of a corporate skyscraper and conduct their drive-bys in Mercedes and Ferraris. See, these Wall Street assholes don't need the bailout money, it's just extra gravy for them. Their CEO boss Sherman Howard (Bub from DAY OF THE DEAD) even whines in an apparent tongue-n-cheek about MBA degrees not worth the paper they're printed on anymore.

They probably realized they must find a credible reason why Dolph eliminites every crook standing in his way, but not save his buddy in time. So they cook up the classic moral dilemma where just as the partner is about to be disposed of by the White Boys, some random psychopaths stick up a convenience store, and Dolph has to pick, and both are loser decisions. Sure in genre convention, his superior bitches him out, but what if Dolph had ignored those customers? This is a Kobayashi Maru for him, or his SOPHIE'S CHOICE. A no-win scenario.

Benben is your expected dorkish anal retentive comic relief sidekick, but he can surprisingly bust some movies and kick ass, kinda like Brandon Lee in SHOWDOWN. He's also a weasel and I loved that scene when he promises Dolph he'll back him up in a meeting with the Feds, only to stab him in the front. Thing is he is a jackass at times for decent and realistic reasons. In fact, I COME IN PEACE is quite funny, which kinda shocked me because I don't casually associate Dolph and Comedy in the same sentence. Consider the scene when they find the body of the alien cop chasing after the villain, Benben admits that Dolph finally has the real evidence to prove his outer space theory, ony for the corpse to implode.

Or when they confront this interstellar scarface, I COME IN PEACE was wise to emphasize how despite Dolph's wonderful ability to kick and make things explode, these cops are still way way over their heads. I had a great laugh when they have the space cop's gun, but since they don't know how to operate it, so they're having to figure it out while running away from this monster. The best scene though is during a car chase, where Benben with the gun blows up the alien. Benben gets out of the car to celebrate this victory, but the monster (inevitably) arises from the ashes and Benben has to run his ass back in..

I'm also impressed with that clever scene where with billards, Dolph comprehends how that flying CD murders by ricochet effect, and does basically understands everything ultimately by natural progression, much like the great 1980s action/thriller F/X. No mindless spoonfeeding here, which is usually the norm within this subgenre. You might appreciate the allegorical implications of when Mr. I Come In Peace uses his lethal tube-syringe to pump heroin into a victim, then after that poor bastard dies from the overdose, he sucks out the overstimulated endorphins from the brain. You'll get the phallic symbolism when he does this same procedure to a cute big-titty girl car mechanic, a concept more science fiction than everything else combined in I COME IN PEACE.

The movie only fails in the climax, where I was hoping that Dolph defies his persona and uses his brains, not braun to win. Such details is what seperates a merely good genre exercise like I COME IN PEACE, and a genuine classic like PREDATOR, who's Second Assistant Director was Craig R. Baxley, who also directed I COME IN PEACE. Baxley has had a long career, having been a stunt coordinator from Norman Jewison's ROLLERBALL to THE WARRIORS, and also was a 2nd AD on of all projects, Warren Beatty's Oscar-winning REDS. As director, Baxley also shot the Brian Bosworth vehicle STONE COLD, which I've never seen but held up highly by respectable action gurus like The Outlaw Vern. I might want to check that out too sometime.

I COME IN PEACE isn't a real cinematic breakthrough, and yes it is a bastard creative child of THE TERMINATOR, LETHAL WEAPON, PREDATOR, and other superior Reagan Decade pictures which I couldn't pinpoint. Yet Alexander Hamilton, one of America's Founding Fathers was illegitimate himself, and he's on the $10 bill. Eat it Lincoln! So there is room in this world for a ridiculously entertaining, well-produced love child with good laughs and explosions like I COME IN PEACE, and especially those that don't go past the 90 minute mark, or any that realize that not every subplot must be resolved by the final credits. Which Hollywood has never fathom.

Also, I COME IN PEACE features Al Leong. He's one of those guys you recognize, but don't know his name. In this Hollywood action cinema era, he always played the token Asian parts. He was part of Alan Rickman's terrorist team in DIE HARD, the torture expert in LETHAL WEAPON that gets his neck broken by Mel Gibson, one of the many kung fu gangsters in John Carpenter's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, Genghis Khan in BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, and shit he was even in an episode of the badass classic television series THE EQUALIZER.