Can you say "different?" Have often do you see a movie in which the lead character never utters one word?That's the case here, a unique story of an alien who crashes near Harlem, a famous black neighborhood in New York City. The alien is a black man, so he fits in despite not being able to speak! He's just looked upon as another "brother," as the title indicates.Two aliens come after him - white guys, naturally. In the Liberal world of films, white people are bad and black people are good 99 percent of the time.....at least when there is a contrast between the two. Writer-director John Sayles is a prime example of this type of racist thinking. But he wrote a fun film here, I have to give him that.Even though some of the scenes make absolutely no sense, it's an entertaining movie start- to-finish. Joe Morton plays the sympathetic alien with three toes and strange nails. You have to root for him because he's portrayed as such an innocent, harmless creature.The best part of the film is the humor, some subtle, some not-so-subtle. The guys in the neighborhood bar where the alien hangs out brought the biggest laughs.I find this a lot of fun to watch every three or four years.

An alien from outer space (Joe Morton) crash lands in NY. He looks like a black man, is totally mute and can fix machines and heal wounds with his bare hands. He's taken in by the citizens of Harlem who grow to like him...but he's being followed by two men in black (John Sayles and David Stratham) who want to bring him back to outer space.An interesting change of pace for director/writer and editor John Sayles...but it doesn't really work. I caught this in 1984 at an art cinema and was pretty unimpressed. My thoughts haven't really changed much. There's no real plot...just Morton wandering around and meeting all these odd but always friendly people. The dialogue is great and Morton is excellent (that's why I'm giving it a 6) but the rest of the acting is pretty bad (except for Sayles and Stratham) and nothing really happens. It just sort of lays there. It also leads to a real ambiguous ending which could be interpreted a number of different ways. Still, this was the kind of independent film that came out in the 1980s and 90s before Hollywood took them over. For that alone this is interesting to watch. It has been beautifully restored by the Anarchists Covention (???) and UCLA. It looks better now than it did in 1984!

What I love about Sayles is that he never forgets that first and foremost, movies should tell stories.This one is a real gem in the rough. It has the irreverence and SciFi conventions of Barry Sonnenfeld's MIB but with social commentary instead of a budget. Also, instead of merely clever comments on NYC life, Sayles shows his characteristic political side by highlighting little tableaux of real life. Slipping in the Harriet Tubman subplot was pure Sayles.I especially loved his usage of music and the chemistry of the barroom regulars. That fight with the MIB was a hoot! Sayles, a Corman vet, knows that special effects shouldn't be used for the sake of having them.

I really enjoyed this film. It is a good example of dialogue over action within a story. The main character does not have any dialogue, but the film is carried so well by the supporting cast that we begin to learn about the main character as much as the supporting cast. Sayles did a great job on this film for a respectable low budget film (some might even say a B film). A good film to watch...It is also a good film for most any screenwriter to study. Screenplays are essentially dialogue and action. That is to say that a reading (or spec) screenplay is set up that way. Dialogue is the vehicle that drives the story, and this film demonstrates that point very well. The idea that the main character has no dialogue is complemented by the dialogue of the supporting cast in intelligent ways.