Peacemaker (1990)

It is a performances centric movie

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

God help me, but I enjoyed this movie a great deal. Jewell Shepard is funny and beautiful and irresistible when gratuitously tied up in phone cord (don't ask), Robert Forster does his usual sturdy work, there is an interesting flip-flop in character sympathies part of the way through and yes, there are some great car stunts and some great fight gags.It was entertaining in spite of its low budget and obviously derivative origins and looked good, too (in terms of lighting and cinematography). It's nice to see people working in the movie industry that do a good job, a professional job, despite working on what is essentially a piece of junk.

As a director, Kevin Tenney's body of work is mixed at best. But as a writer it's clear that he has no problem stealing the plots of other movies. This is a blatant ripoff of a 1987 movie called The Hidden, which had the same storyline but much better action sequences. His later film, Endangered Species, is clearly a ripoff of Terminator. Witchtrap ripped off The Haunting and Hell House and his own Witchboard, which featured an equally cheesy villain. The opening set-up of the one Night of the Demons script he wrote (#3) was his attempt to steal Quentin Tarentino's crime action thunder, mixed with his usual rehash of plot points from the original film in the series. With all the struggling young writers out there trying to make a buck, you'd think that Tenney would throw away his keyboard and hunt for original material. Looking over his credits on this site, his best films were written by other people.

Okay, the story is kind of dumb (funny how one of the aliens doesn't know what a "joke" is, yet he can use words like "rejuvenate") and won't please sci-fi purists, but if you're more of an action fan, you should find this film unexpectedly entertaining. It has some truly amazing stunts (including the best motorcycle-passes-under-truck stunt I've ever seen), and it's clever in one respect at least: it jerks us around until the end regarding the question of which of the two aliens is really the "good" one. "Peacemaker" is a prime example of a movie that is made with a little (money), but works hard and accomplishes a lot. In fact, it's hard to believe that this film was directed by the same man who made the awful "Night of the Demons". It's also hard to believe that it's so little-known. (**1/2)

1st watched 10/18/2001 - 4 out of 10 (Dir- Kevin Tenney): One of the many regenerating alien that never dies movie's has some good scenes and a little bit of whodunit(being tricked into who is the bad alien and who is the good alien). Despite a few good scenes, overall this is pretty much a retread from many of the same kinds of movies. It has a few car crashes, chase scenes, violent fights with of course the ever-popular regenerating aliens which we've all seen before, and of course there has to be alien-sex (leaving the possibility for a sequel.) And finally, an Arnold Schwarzenegger sound-alike complete with speech impedement who happens to be the good alien. If this all doesn't sound familiar you haven't been watching some of the most popular science fiction movies of all time. Go back and watch them instead.