I Come In Peace ( * * * )

If, one day, they uncover a time capsule of bad late eighties/early nineties movies, I hope there's a copy of I Come In Peace there (even though my VHS copy is under the title of "Dark Angel" on the movie itself). Released in 1990, starring Dolph Lundgren as hard-boiled cop Jack Caine whose black partner dies within the first, oh, ten minutes (yes, this film is that cliched--and more!), I Come In Peace is the ultimate in eighties cop/action movie cheese.

The Acting: Dolph Lundgren, who is in reality has a genius-level I.Q., plays his usual brawn-over-brains cop, who trusts his instincts more than procedures. Brian Benben plays his FBI agent partner, "Special Agent Smith". In an admirable act of screenplay economy, Dolph's girlfriend is the coroner. Now that's writing.

The Story: "Who is that guy?" "He's some asshole from outer space." You couldn't find a more eighties movie. It starts with criminals infiltrating a high-tech building in the guise of cops, there's a car chase, the old partner dies and the new one gets kidnapped, Jack gets put on mandatory vacation by his angry captain when he leaves a surveillance case on a bunch of drug-dealers to break up a convenience store robbery. And an alien drug-dealer, chased to earth by an alien cop, is collecting human endorphines to sell to his kind, by sucking them out of people's heads with a tube that comes out of his wrist. His only dialogue? "I come in peace." Well, he also says, "I win" near the end, but both statements are blatant lies.

The Direction: If you love Sam Raimi cam, hunt down this movie. One of the alien's weapons is a compact-disc looking blade that is attuned to human electromagnetic frequency, or as the lab tech who studies it says, "It's like setting the dial to K-I-L-L." It bounces around the room slicing throats in "blade cam." Matthias Hues, as the bad alien, delivers a memorably misanthropic performance as the gun-weilding outer space asshole. Craig R. Baxley directed another classic eighties movie, Action Jackson.

Overall: If you like outer-space drug dealer movies, you should check it out.

Tredekka Rules:

• Rule 3: Suck Actor Penalty--I never could stand Brian Benben. -3 stars.
• Rule 4: Sweet Actor Bonus--3 stars goes to Mr. Al Leong, whose very presence in the film is like an imprimateur of its eightiesness.
• Rule 6: Over The Top Acting Award--1 star for Matthias Hues, whose catchphrase never gets old. His sly smile when a cop cruiser blows up behind him during a chase made me hunt this movie down, because I saw the trailer to it about a hundred times on my VHS copy of Miller's Crossing.
• Rule 14: Cool Gun Award--both aliens have rapid fire space pistols that blow up cars quicker than a Mexican can blow leaves with a leaf blower. +1 star.
• Rule 24: Exploding Buildings Are Good--espically in a scene that rips off Die Hard. +1 star

Tredekka Score: ( * * * )