Enemy Mine follows two unlikely people that become the best of friends through circumstance and understanding. After soldier Willis Davidge crashes to a near by planet after chasing down his enemy Jeriba Shigan who is a reptile looking humanoid. They are both stuck in the unfamiliar planet with no one else to help them, so they must go against what they were taught and become a team to survive.
Review: This is one of the very first science fiction films that I ever really saw as a young kid and it has stuck with me since my first viewing. Unlike alot of the other films in that genre that I have seen since then have never really had what Enemy Mine had. What it had was something deep and in many ways moving. I think anyone who watches Enemy Mine could get their own idea of what it's message could be. I personally think that it hits on the subject of race as well as the misconceptions we get taught about other cultures. I may be wrong about that, but it's the way I view it.
Now as far as the characters go there really is only the main two for the most part, which is Willis Davidge (Dennis Quaid) and Jeriba Shigan also known as Jerry (Louis Gossett Jr.). There is Jerry's son which comes later on in the film as well as some bad guys who work on a mining rig. If you want to you could count the monster that attacks them from the ground! Each one of the main characters are played by some amazingly talented actors. Dennis Quaid plays perfectly as the more intolerant of the two that perfectly plays opposite of Louis Gossett Jr.'s character Jerry. They both have awesome chemistry on film and work off each other perfectly. Not sure if they played in any other films together, but I would love to see them work together again. One other actor I will mention that is in this film as a bad guy is the late Brion James as Stubbs, he has been in a ton of other films including another film I reviewed
Red Scorpion.
The man at the helm of Enemy Mine is the great Wolfgang Petersen who also did one of my favorite kids films "The Neverending Story" and one of my favorite mini-series "Das Boot". He is a very talented director that brings visually stunning films that also tell great tales at the same time. I hold him on par with another amazing director Stanley Kubrick. From what I have gathered Enemy Mine was his second english language film, the first was The Neverending Story. From this film on that is what he stuck to and made many other big Hollywood films.
Now as far as the presentation of this film they did a great job with this one. The picture is clear and quite sharp. The colors especially in the backgrounds and sky are very bold and stunning. If you have seen the Blu-ray release of The Neverending Story you will get what I mean because both have some great colors. The audio as well is very clear and I don't really have any problems with either. Overall this is an upgrade from the older DVD release. I badly wish they could of done a special feature of a retrospective of the making of the film. The only thing I would of changed about this release is the cover which is not horrible, but I think the cover of the booklet that came with it would of been way better. It's a picture of one of my favorite parts of the films.
I highly recommend that if you are a fan of this film that you go get it as soon as possible because there are only 3,000 copies made and once they are sold out the price will skyrocket like many of Twilight Time's other releases have. Go to
www.screenarchives.com and order it!
-Daniel "Damnation" Lee
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Genre: Action/Sci-fi/Drama
Blu-Ray Release Year: 2012
Theatrical Release Year: 1985
Time Length: 108 mins.
Company: Twilight Time
Website:
www.screenarchives.com
