The Sender (1998)

Fresh and Exciting

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

Admirable film.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The Sender is godawful Z-Grade SciFi with cloying, grating intentions, a script with War Of The World's type ambitions that was given an allowance of like ten bucks to come into fruition, and the result is a windows 98 screensaver with a fraction of a pulse. It's a shame because they scored two dope actors in Michael Madsen and R. Lee Ermey, but as good as they are they're both sheepishly notorious for appearing in bottom feeding diarrhea like this to put food on the table. Madsen strains his tear ducts as the sympathetic father whose adorable daughter has mysterious connections to extraterrestrial activity from years before. He's on the run from all kinds of government folks including Ermey's gonzo, overzealous military asshole, a one dimensional fire and brimstone go-getter who hunts them six ways to Sunday. That's about all you'll get, besides cameos from Dyan Cannon and golden oldie Robert Vaughn, as well as some Fisher Price worthy UFO effects and an all round lack of pride in the craft from everyone involved. Poo.

A fighter pilot is shot down. Decades later, his son is military himself, and has a daughter. The girl is kidnapped for scientific reasons, and it's up to Madsen(who squints and badasses his way through this… it's hilarious to see him act completely cool and smooth even in the face of contact with extraterrestrials) and an alien who has kept a watch on the family(and chooses to come to us in the form of a *really* hot chick, with amazing legs, in tight silver latex… and even though she doesn't stay in that for all that long, we straight men of Earth thank her and her kind a lot for that) to get her back. This has pretty reasonable performances, and other than Michael, we also get R. Lee Ermey being his usual self(and when is that ever a negative?) and Robert Vaughn appears in a role that is important, if not afforded an awful lot of screen-time. The film is basically an action flick with some sci-fi aspects, and as far as that goes, it's decent. We get chases, particularly vehicular ones(several cars go flying in this), shootouts and occasional physical fighting. This is quite funny a couple of times, and we are surprisingly mostly spared the "what, you mean something here, in this place that I'm not familiar with, is different from what I'm used to" punchlines. It's 91 minutes sans credits, and it's somewhat entertaining. The FX are OK. Actually, they're better than in other of these low-budget ones… but let's return to The Sender(sorry, it was too good, had to do it). There is violence and disturbing content in this. I recommend this to fans of the genre, as long as you don't expect too much, and accept it for what it is. 6/10

This trash was so awful at points, i got angry. The car chases were devised on the back of the directors aspirations of this being an all out action flick with lots of crashes and lots of explosions. In truth, it resembled something i saw a few years ago starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd. Yes that one with all those police cars flying through the air..The only difference here is that this was supposed to be taken seriously. I cringed when i saw a GMC truck outrun a Porsche 911! And why oh why did a car plummet head on into the side of a (yes another) GMC truck and instead of stopping it dead in its tracks like you would expect a 3-ton truck to do, the car flew into the air - over the truck, performed a mid-air roll and came crashing back down to earth just like you see in the opening credits of The A Team? At least the A Team was tongue in cheek! Then there's the gun fights. Remember last action hero when it pointed out how heroes never seem to get hit by machine gun fire or reload their (damn) guns? The incompetent directors of this garbage didn't seem to consider this rather large technicality.I get the feeling Michael Madson was bribed into this role. Throughout the entire picture he had the same look on his face as he does in the Orange Advert at the cinema when hes in that phone box. Looks like the guys at orange got their man after all! If there had been even just one light hearted moment in this entire film, i wouldn't have been near as disgusted at the farcical action scenes and linear dead pan (dare i call it) acting. If you ever have a choice between watching this and sticking a pair needles through your eyes, the latter would be a wiser choice.

Wow! This is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. And I don't mean that in a good way. (grin) Once you get past the endless car chases and senseless shoot-em-ups, you have to shake your head in amazement at just how badly this film was botched. I mean, it had the stench of rotting cheese you could smell all the way back to the alien's home planet.If I had to guess, I'd say this was a first-time effort for the director, the screenwriter, AND the musical effects people. It just reeked of "We have NO clue what we're doing", which made it pretty darn funny, once you got over the expectation that you were going to see a "real movie".It's difficult to capture the essence of how this film plays out, but I'd characterize it best by saying, ...what would happen if you got a bunch of actors together, didn't let them read a script, then handed them their lines one page at a time, just before shooting each scene? They'd have no idea what was going on. They'd ask, "what's my motivation here?", to which the director would respond, "forget motivation, just say your lines". And that's exactly what the "actors" here do, 90% of the time. They just say lines. They don't act, they don't react, they don't respond to what's going on around them, there's no emotion. It's just bizarre. And the movie is full of these "WTF? moments". I kept asking myself, "Are these human beings, or zombies?". The one exception being R. Lee Ermy, who goes postal at the drop of a hat, with no provocation whatsoever.I'm baffled how someone could get funding to make a film this poorly, but I'd guess they didn't get to make any more. So here's your opportunity to catch a real schlock-fest. If you go into it with no expectations; like lots of action, with no suspense; don't mind gaping plot holes and a senseless script, you could be in for an amusing hour and a half of shaking your head and saying "unfreaking-believable!". I can't believe I watched the WHOLE thing. (smile)