Enemy Mine - Brief Thoughts

[labingi]

I dug up Enemy Mine on Netflix and watched it for probably the first time since the 1980s. I remembered enjoying it, and it was good to see it again. In critical terms, I'm reminded of my Race and Sex in Science Fiction professor's comment on The Planet of the Apes, that it's a complex and interesting story somewhat spoiled by its cinematic rendering. Enemy Mine handles the formation of a cross-cultural (and cross gender) friendship very well, including things like learning each other's languages, which sci fi movies/series typically skip. It is a psychologically believable fable of peace-through-mutual-understanding. Plus, it does some nice genderbending work--to a degree that surprises me in a fairly mainstream film from 1985. It suffers from Hollywoodization, including a way-too-long and rather unnecessary fight scene at the end. The scene reads rather like Revenge of the Sith (or was it Attack of the Clones?), pre-CGI: lots of fire and heavy machinery moving around a rather busy set. The dialogue is also a bit weak in places, and the Blade Runner-esque narration is as pointless here as in BR. Still in all, it's well worth seeing. If produced a bit more stylishly, it could have been one of the great SF films of all time.