DVD Review: I Come In Peace (aka Dark Angel) - Page 2

I first discovered this film one fateful evening last year. I had been watching a film by the name of Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and his old buddy Lou Diamond Philips, an old VHS that had been ripped from the eons of antiquity from an ancient video shelf. As my acquaintance and I finished laughing our gall bladders out our femurs, we noticed that the tape did not stop, oh no, it did in fact continue to play. Turns out there was another film on that there plastic. It was none other than Dark Angel (the UK title). And what a joyful time we had viewing it, turned out to be even better than Kiefer’s moustache!

It’s interesting to think how film premises are worked out and developed, what genesis leads to a film being made. Often it’ll come from a literary product (I read the other day that something like 30% of all movies are literary adaptations), maybe an idea of giving a famous actor a vehicle for him or her to show off whatever their particular niche talent may be. Rarely does a film originate from such profound and enlightened areas of thought as the one-liner. I Come In Peace is one such article. Our big bad alien dude, as he comes across a potential human victim, will often say the following words, “I come in peace.” There’s no reason for this, he isn’t luring them into a fall sense of security like in Mars Attacks, they’re right there, he doesn’t need to use intellectual tactics like that. No, the only reason for this plot point is so that at the penultimate stage of the movie, when the big epic final battle is taking place in what looks like a reject derelict from Darkman, the alien can say those wistful lines and Lundgren can hit back with the rejoinder, “And you go in pieces, asshole!”

It’s poetry right there running across your jowls. It makes sense, base a film around a cheeseball line your main character gives before he blows up the bad guy.

And that brings me back to the central theme of blowing stuff up. A good alien shows up on earth to try and stop the bad one (I know, this reads like Balzac). The aliens possess handguns that act more like the gatling guns of a warship; they’re the most over-the-top piece of film weaponry I think I’ve ever seen. And they’re brilliant for it. The guns can reduce a fine, upstanding concrete wall to the sort of dust found at the bottom of a Rice Krispies packet, infernal dust that ends up afloat on the surface of your milk.

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic and the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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