The first movie cop duo between a human and an alien. James Caan, as usual, makes a cool, charming role. Mandy Patinkin, very convincing, as the alien policeman. Terence Stamp, credible in the role of the wicked alien. It has a special atmosphere, I liked it, a pleasant surprise. The scene in the cabin of the bar, between Matthew Sykes (James Caan) and Cassandra (Leslie Bevis), an extraterrestrial stripper who wants to make love with him, is the most successful and funny scene in the movie.

I first fell in love with this movie when i was a kid and we had it on VHS... it is a good mix of drama and heart.... simply put it kept me coming back time and again.

I just love anything James Caan is in so I decided to give this one a try, and boy was I glad that I did. Mandy Pantikin also did a nice job on the film,, and i'm a big Terrence Stamp fan so I enjoyed the acting,, the premise was excellent to,,, I graduated the year this came out but never got around to seeing it till much later., so the story goes that Caan has to take on a partner,, well he's sorta an alien and Caan resents that and has arguments and bickers with him constantly but eventually the learn to work together get along and eventually become good friends, they go up against some bad guy aliens who wish to do harm to the human race as they are selling some kind of drug that has deadly outcomes for those that inject it,, I think that this movie was ahead of it's time.. a great movie for sci fi lover's and James Caan as well. I was not disappointed whatsoever.

The buddy cop movie was a popular and short lived genre from the late 1980s early 1990s . It was obvious why it was so short lived because it followed a standard formula of a hard bitten veteran cop getting teamed up with an innocent or unlikely partner . Veteran doesn't like innocent partner but they bond and innocent partner wins veteran's respect as they crack the case together ALIEN NATION brings a gimmick to this formula and that is one of them is an alien ! You see an alien race have come to Earth and Ronald Reagen allows them to stay and a few years later the aliens try to assimilate to Earth ways . James Cann plays tough cop Matthew Sykes whose partner is killed in a shoot out and gets partnered by alien newcomer Sam Francisco One can't help noticing the potential to ALIEN NATION . We don't learn much about the aliens and perhaps mindful of this the producers thought there'd be a lot of mileage in bringing out more sequels expanding upon the aliens culture . As it stood the film didn't do very well but a television series was quickly commissioned and just as quickly cancelled but did lead to a continuation via a series of made for television films It's easy to understand why ALIEN NATION wasn't a big box office success . Film makers like Paul Verhoeven were really pushing the boat out with violence round about this time and even when it was released ALIEN NATION seemed slightly tame . It's also a film that tries to bring a bit of satirical humour such as a scene where RAMBO 6 is advertised at the cinema and the humorous names of the visitors " Rudyard Kipling no sh*t ! " but there isn't enough of this in the film