The Invasion
The Invasion
Aug 24When you have a one-year-old, escaping that adorable being’s clutches for even just a couple hours suddenly takes on a level of discussion and negotiation rivaling a middle east peace summit.
For example, my in-laws kindly offered of their own free will to baby “sit” our daughter Cate so my wife and I could see a movie. With Cate, baby “sitting” is actually more like baby “running around the house like a maniac so Cate doesn’t stick her fingers in a socket or find a knife and WHERE DID THOSE SCISSORS COME FROM? NO! NO! PUT THOSE DOWN!”
So, yes, it was a beautiful gesture.
That was the easy part. The hard part: WHICH MOVIE? We batted around titles like Superbad, The Simpsons Movie, and Transformers (okay, Transformers was just in my head) while carefully weighing the variables. What did our mood dictate? Which films were suitable for DVD viewing in the home, and which seemed to dictate a big-screen viewing? And perhaps most importantly, in the words of my personal spiritual guru Shmi Skywalker:
“What does your heart tell you?”
My wife’s heart screamed “The Invasion!” Because she loves her those thriller movies, and because she was kind enough to go see Harry Potter with me a few weeks ago, I went along for the ride.
I experienced a movie that was not quite good, but definitely “good enough,” if that makes any sense.
The Invasion is your standard off-the-shelf riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a novel that has been adapted for film many times before. I think it’s the primal appeal of the story’s hook that keeps it in the public consciousness: Everyone you know is conspiring against you, and you’re the only sane being in an insane world. Shit, that’s pretty much my life credo.
So it’s got this gut response hook that instantly draws you in, cause it’s freaky, and so the filmmakers almost have to work hard at screwing it up. They didn’t manage it, but I understand they tried. The tale of The Invasion’s troubled production history is classic Hollywood second-guessing; only this time, it involved a major pop cinema braintrust, the Wachowski brothers (of Matrix fame).
Which parts are Wachowski, and which parts aren’t? It’s easy to tell, I think, thanks to the EW article linked above, and thanks just to a passing knowledge of their directorial style. It’s safe to say the action sequences are all Wachowski, even if none of them snap, crackle, or pop as tightly as anything from the Matrix movies. (You can also infer a lot from the fact that the film’s big car chase brings to mind memories of Nicole Kidman’s injuries during the reshoots, which took place during a car chase scene.)
The interesting part is that to me the film played seamlessly. There wasn’t any jarring, disjointed stumble between the portions crafted by original director Oliver Hirschbiegel and those cooked up by the Wachowskis. It all flowed together, and it kept me pretty gripped. Admittedly, that’s not hard to do, as I can usually get sucked in by even a half-assed thriller. I’d say The Invasion qualifies as more of a 3/4 assed thriller.
Part of the appeal also has to be the acting talent involved, which brings a level of high-sheen gravitas to the proceedings that you don’t get when your lead actress is, say, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, and Jeffrey Wright put all their Oscar-caliber shoulders against this bad boy and push. Hard. And they move this fucker down the road at a speed approximating “good.”
So, yeah. About the worst thing I can say about The Invasion is that it’s a week later and I don’t really remember it all that well. Within a year, it’ll be one of those films we’ll stumble across on cable and we’ll have to stop for a minute and wonder, “Did I really see that at the theater???” But for those two hours or so, I enjoyed the ride.
(I will say that if the DVD has the cajones to even attempt to provide some documentation of the evolution of the film, such as deleted scenes or commentary, I’ll be very eager to check that out. Somehow, I doubt that’ll happen.)
