Review: Excellent ARRIVAL Makes For a Timely Sci-Fi Feature

Imagine an alien invasion flick that relies on quiet introspection, instead of bombastic rhetoric. One that chooses, in lieu of blowing up the Empire State Building for the umpteenth time, to move out of the big city entirely, and set all the action in the wide open Montana countryside. One that acknowledges that humanity's worst enemy has and always will be fear, but offers hope, and a soothing reminder that understanding, humility and patience can save the day in ways safety zones, machine guns and acts of aggression never will - if we let them.

I promise, I'm still talking about the movie, but I will say this: If ARRIVAL were a person, she would be a woman, white (resembling Amy Adams, of course), and she would have voted for Hillary Clinton, despite what the exit polling would imply.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve, ARRIVAL centers on Dr. Louise Banks (a stellar Amy Adams), a top-of-her-field linguist who is recruited by the government, represented here by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker, with not enough screen time) and CIA man Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg, as yet another foil, of the you-are-not-helping variety), to attempt communication with recently arrived extraterrestrials, dubbed heptapods. Her assignment - to get answers to two questions: What do they want? Where are they from?

Louise is teamed with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner, who loses himself in the role or, as someone close to me said, "It was a long time before I realized that was Hawkeye.") and ... and, quite frankly, I'm not sure what might be a spoiler, so I'm going to stop here.

As usual in first contact movies, Earth is on the brink of disaster, but there's more, much more, in the screenplay by Eric Heisserer, based on short story by Ted Chiang, "Story of Your Life." There are genuine moments of suspense and levity, and shades of classic sci-fi films, like THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, but ARRIVAL manages to avoid cliché and moralistic posturing in favor of getting the job done, both in terms of plot and production. ARRIVAL may ask some big questions, and make some statements, but it's not without the key ingredients for a good really movie.

Villeneuve's camera work is captivating, the script from Heisserer gripping, and the visual and sound design impressive. The design of "the shell" (the alien ship) is decidedly different, stone-ish and oblong, as is the alien language, both written and spoken. And credit to Jóhann Jóhannsson - the truth is some aspects of filmmaking you really only notice when they're bad, so imagine my surprise when I noticed the film's score and thought, "Wow, this is really good."

All that said, ARRIVAL starts and stops with Amy Adams and her character, Louise Banks. Adams carries with her an everywoman relatability, often beneficial and in this film required. In this role she channels it into the perfect blend of courageous strength and vulnerability. Louise isn't the quirky scientist (à la Jeff Goldblum) or the unbelievable nuclear physicist (I'm looking at you, Denise Richards), she's a woman doing her job as best she can - but the film is clear, no one person is going to save the day. That's something we can only do together.

A few pages into the film's production notes (does anyone actually read those?) there are some quotes from producer Aaron Ryder, who mentions the film's production company (FilmNation) focuses on making films for grown-ups. And that's what ARRIVAL is - a film for grown-ups, and a timely one at that.

ARRIVAL, starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forest Whitaker, is rated PG-13 for brief strong language.

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