When it comes to UFO events, few are more famous than the alleged events that took place outside the New Mexico town of Roswell in the summer of 1947. Yet that wasn't always the case though as for decades the case lingered in obscurity. While it had begun to come back to the fore, it was with this 1994 Showtime film that the case began to make an impact. Looking at the film, it isn't hard to see why as it may well rank among the best films made on the topic.That is in part because of the cast. Kyle MacLachlan was a perfect choice for the role of Jesse Marcel, the Army Air Force Intelligence officer who finds himself unwittingly at the center of the whole affair who finds himself returning to the case three decades later. MacLachlan has a silent strength to him throughout whether he is the young officer who seems to be catching the break of a lifetime or the old man trying to make sense of the past confronting it head on. It is the sort of performance that lifts up the entire production.The rest of the cast is solid as well. Martin Sheen effectively has an extended cameo despite being billed second as the mysterious figure Townsend but Sheen does well with the part and gives a strong performance with the little screen time that he has. Dwight Yoakam does well as Mac Brazel, the rancher who starts off the whole business by finding some strange debris on the ranch he's working. The cast is also full of character actors who bring the story to life admirably including John M. Jackson, Xander Berkeley, Bob Gunton, Nick Searcy, and Phillip Baker Hall among others. Kudos as well to Kim Greist as Marcel's wife. It's a solid cast that helps ground what is an incredible story in some much needed human reality.Beyond the cast, Roswell is a well produced piece of work. From the cinematography of Steven Poster to the production design of Michael Z. Hanan, the costumes from May Routh, and the score by Elliot Goldenthal, the film exudes a competence and firm grasp of the inherent dramatic nature of the events it portrays without overplaying it. Hats off as well to the film's make-up department in aging up several members of the cast for the scenes set in the 1970s. All are brought together under the direction of Jeremy Kagan whose direction shows the occasional flourish but only when the production calls for it. The result is a well made and highly watchable ninety minutes or so. Yet nothing perhaps does more to ground Roswell firmly to Earth than the script by Arthur Kopit (from a story by Kopit, producer Paul Davids, and director Kagan). One can imagine all too easily from other UFO films that this could have been wildly speculative and more science fiction than anything else. Instead, Roswell sticks with the UFO based accounts of the case and presents them without much fictionalization and without frills to make a compelling and believable case. It's true that the film's 1970 sections are fiction with Marcel effectively standing in for a number of investigators who have examined the case but much of what the film presents in its 1947 sections has eyewitness testimony to back it up (whatever stock you wish to place in it). The film admits when it gets into wild speculation (especially in the last twenty minutes or so) and acknowledges conflicting accounts, all to its credit. The script then is an example of how to take compelling but controversial material and present it on the screen.In the end, it is no surprise that Roswell was nominated for a Golden Globe as that year's Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television. It is a well acted and well made piece of work which brings potentially one of the most fascinating stories of the 20th century vividly to life without becoming sensational along the way. As a result of both its seriousness and how well it stands up even after two decades, it stands out among the pack of UFO related film works as a definite highlight.

Your enjoyment of this film does not depend largely on your acceptance of the story of a crashed alien spacecraft and a government cover up that just does not seem to want to go away. If you believe the narrative, which is based upon Kevin Randle's book UFO crash at Roswell, you will be amply rewarded by a tale that adheres closely to the story, and which treats the subject matter with respect. Even if you think the whole story is stuff and nonsense, you can still enjoy a well made, well cast film that has plenty of atmosphere and crisp direction. Although made for television, Roswell has above average production values which add greatly to the overall tone of the film. Kyle Mclachlan's performance as the perplexed Marcel is fine and some of the set pieces, especially the discovery of the spacecraft wreckage are truly unnerving.

I really hate conspiracy theorists. They make me want to vomit, honestly. Everything from the Kennedy assassinations to 9/11 to the freaking Illuminati, Masonic Templars working with the Mossad to abduct our cattle or whatever, there's no end to it. My favorite is actually Sterling Hayden's theory about fluoridation of the water from DR. STRANGELOVE and the global commie plot to sap & impurify all of our precious bodily fluid. Now THAT I can believe.I'd rank ROSWELL up there with Oliver Stoneground's JFK as amongst the most effective examples of conspiracy theory propaganda masquerading as an entertainment extravaganza. The proof is that I am actually acquainted with several dunderheads who are of the opinion that BOTH films show what really happened, albeit in the form of historical reconstructions. Both films press every button in their respective conspiratorial play book, with ghoulish government secrecy, evil rogue military industrial shenanigans, shady men in black suits, doubletalk, doublethink, and a conveniently noble hero/fall guy "everyman" at the center of both stories, ROSWELL delivers the goods and is convincing enough to get away with re-writing history as the paranoid would have it be taught. But it's only a movie, and a flawed one at that.The main problem is that contemporary teaching implies that both heroes misled themselves in regards to much of the mythos that made their stories so compelling, and that the truth behind the conspiracy is actually mundane, anti-romantic and a buzzkill compared to the sexy conspiracies outlined. Punctuated by official sounding military jargon (the expression "mandate" is sternly referred to repeatedly), an apparent obsessive eye for period detail right down to Kyle MaClachlan puffing on unfiltered cigarettes, snappy looking 1940's suits and some laughable matte paintings showing that which the dingbats drawn to this stuff WANT to see.To quote Harry Nilsson, we see what we want to see and we hear what we want to hear. In 1995 when I first encountered this movie I also desperately wanted to believe every last bit of nonsense hurled at the viewer like a face full of compressed cheeze. Sure, there probably are some basic truths suggested by the film but it's done with such a zest for showing those myths in a suggestive enough manner so that people are actually convinced that they have seen what the wreckage field really looked like, what the aliens really looked like, heard the threats made against the witnesses to stay silent or perpetuate some lie, and the finger of blame pointed squarely at the US government.I am still convinced that something out of the ordinary happened at Roswell in 1947 without the laughable nonsense portrayed in this movie. I am not sure if it involved the crash of an extra terrestrial spacecraft so much as misidentification of something that shouldn't have been where it was found. And in spite of my stern admonishment above I don't believe that the feds have come clean on the incident, mostly because whatever may or may not have happened was "covered up" so quickly that there isn't a paper trail that can prove OR disprove the wildest of allegations -- That a flying saucer crashed, a rancher found bits of the junk, that a second crash site was found complete with alien life forms who may not have been quite dead.The second crash site is important because, like all good conspiracy theories, it answers one of the basic problems with it's core premise, in this case the legendary "debris field" reports: Where were the working parts? Where were the engines and the cabin seats and the landing gear? All they found was a few yards worth of tinfoil, balsa sticks, scotch tape and some filament materials. How do you get a rocket ship out of that? And the obvious answer is that it wasn't the rocket ship, just part of it. That lets the theorists off the hook for not having enough junk to make a rocket ship, with the convenient answer that the government hid it all away in the Blue Room at Wright Patterson or out at Area 51.One thing you have to keep in mind when thinking about paranormal phenomenon is that eye witnesses are statistically unreliable: You can't reproduce what they claim to have seen, and their stories tend to change over time. Jesse Marcel himself was guilty of embellishing his story of coming in contact with the wreckage, adding new details every time he told the story. One could argue that he was simply remembering more detail as time went on, but the fact remains that when you look at the reports and evidence collected in 1947 it sounds a lot less sexy than what was being remembered thirty, forty, and fifty years later.That doesn't make this a bad movie by the way; In spite of some retarded high school drama club "aging" makeup, histrionic over-acting (the "I saw the bodies!" by a fictional nurse character is a really bad laugh), Martin Sheen lurking around just being Martin Sheen, and a condensed cliffnotes version of the story, ROSWELL is immensely watchable, conspiracy thinking viewers will find it very entertaining and as others point out some of the issues the movie raise probably have a certain amount of veracity to them. But just remember it's propaganda made by people who want viewers to arrive at a specific conclusion, and if you don't keep your thinking cap on you'll find yourself snookered into believing it like some of the people I know, one of whom I had a heated argument with over the fact that it's a MOVIE, a work of fiction, and an entertainment. Just like JFK, though a bit more fun, innocent, and less obnoxious.4/10

(There May Be Spoilers) Story about the crash outside of Roswell New Mexico, in the early summer of 1947, and how it changed the lives of everyone involved in the investigation and handling of the evidence of that incident as well as those who were witnesses to it. Both in the military as well as those of the local population. The story of "The Incident at Roswell" begins some thirty years later at the 30 year reunion of members of the famed 509th Bomb Wing of the 8th USAAF the only group of bombers who were armed with atomic bombs in the world at that time back in the late 1940's. It was the 509th who's B-29 bombers dropped the two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima & Nagasaki in August 1945 that ended the Second World War. At the reunion is retired Maj. Jesse Marcel,Kyle MacLachian, who was the intelligence officer of that bomber wing back in 1947 when the Roswell crash happened. Sick and dying Jesse want's to finally get to the bottom of what happened back then and make it public before he dies and tries to get as much information from the soldiers airmen and civilians who were there and knows what happened but have been too afraid to talk about it all these years.At the time of the crash in July 1947 Jesse and his commanding officer at the air base in Roswell Col. Blanchard, John M. Jackson, came to the conclusion that the debris that was found outside of Roswell at the Brazel ranch was out of this world and very possibly that of an extraterrestrial space craft. Col. Blanchard released the startling story "US Army Captures a Crashed Flying Saucer outside of Roswell NM" that made headlines all over the world. The next day Gen. Ramey, Matthew Falson, arrived from D.C and told both Col. Blanchard and Maj. Jesse Marcel to change their story from a "flying saucer" to an army weather balloon crashing in the desert outside of Roswell. Jesse was made out to look like a fool and incompetent with him having to stand before newsmen and news photographers looking like a jerk holding pieces of a weather balloon and making it look like he didn't know the difference between that and an alien spaceship. It also hurt Jesse that both his wife Vy and young son Jesse Jr. (Kim Greist & J.D Daniels), who knew that Jesse was telling the truth, were both made to swallow that made up story and having to see him humiliated in front of the American public and his friends as well. At the reunion Jesse finally gets to the truth about what happened from many of those who were involved in the investigation and the cover up of the evidence at Roswell, as well as those UFO investigators who were investigating it then in 1977. In the end he dies in peace, Jesse died some nine years later in 1986, feeling that hopefully in the near future the truth would come out and prove, once in for all, that he was right about what happened at Roswell back in 1947. What really happened at Roswell in 1947 we may never know if we have to count on the US government and military to release the evidence about that incident. In 1994 the US Air Force released a statement that the people who claimed that a space ship crashed at Roswell and that there were a number of alien bodies recovered, one of the aliens was reported to have survived, mistook that for the US Air force's Operation Mogul. Mogul had high altitude balloons drop dummies in parachutes to see if humans can survive those high parachutes drops in the future. The paper trail totally disputes that claim since Operation Mogul was conducted in the early to mid 1950's years after "The Roswell Incident" was said to have taken place. In fact it's "The Roswell Incident", not Operation Mogul, that's supported by the newspapers magazines radio and television reports at that time in the fateful summer of 1947. The Then Secretary of Defense James Vincent Forrestal, Eugune Roche, was reported to have had a major hand in the Roswell Investagation back in 1947 that at the time was classified above Top Secret by the newly formed CIA. Within two years Forrestal lost his mind and was committed to the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Washington D.C after suffering a severe mental breakdown. Forrestal later fell or jumped out of his 16th floor hospital room window to his death in the early morning hours of May 22, 1949. Was it what he saw at Roswell, and forced to keep silent about it, that drove him to kill himself? What exactly did happened outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947? The American people as well as the world may never know. What's positive about the "Incident at Roswell" is that those in charge of finding out what happened, then as well as now, will never let it see the light of day. Those in charge will continue to cover up the "Roswell Incident" and keep it covered up for as long as they have the power and authority to do so. And nothing short of a massive landing of alien space crafts in all the major capitals and cities on earth, to show the people on earth that they in fact do exist and are real, will finally make the US Government reveal what really happened at Roswell almost sixty years ago.