Review: The Invasion -- Nick's Review

The Invasion's troubled path to theaters - in which German director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) apparently submitted an unacceptable cut of the film to the studio, leading to covert additional script-work and shooting by the Wachowski Brothers and V for Vendetta's James McTeigue - have at this point been well documented. Yet while it's easy to pinpoint such issues as the explanation for the mess that is this latest version of Jack Finney's classic sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers, it's much tougher to see how Dave Kajganich's screenplay could have ever been turned into something great, what with its near-total lack of character development and downright embarrassing stabs at injecting its tale with modern political subtext. Hirschbiegel's film is simultaneously cursory and heavy-handed, a lethal combination compounded by a pervasive disjointedness seemingly brought about by endless post-production re-configurations of the material. Labeling it a mess would be to understate the case; a more apt description would be that it's chaotic to the point of being anarchic, a handsomely photographed pulp fiasco that squanders its strong cast as well as any modestly intriguing ideas rumbling around in its head.

In a set-up so quick it's liable to give one whiplash, The Invasion outlines the origins of its alien incursion: a space shuttle explodes upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, and its debris is contaminated by an extraterrestrial organism that enters human hosts' bloodstream and then, when people fall asleep and enter the REM cycle, combines with night sweat to do something or other to their DNA to make them act like stiff, detached robots. Self-serious scientific mumbo jumbo spreads throughout the film like a contagion, corrupting any fun that might be had from the patently supernatural proceedings - or, at least, any intended fun, as there are a few mean-spirited pleasures to be had at watching a project flail about in such patently absurd and incompetent ways. Such as watching Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig (as a psychologist and doctor, respectively) pretend to be infected by showing no emotion, a state that seems no different from their normal comportment. Or trying to figure out why Craig's doctor, who works at a hospital, is close friends with upper-crust foreign diplomats. Or how, with one laughable cut, Kidman goes from fleeing a group of pursuers on a quiet suburban street to running - still at full speed - through downtown D.C.
Don't, however, let my flippancy fool you - The Invasion isn't campy so much as simply turgid, exhibiting next to no consistent rhythm, momentum, or coherence as it barrels toward a limp, abrupt finale. Scenes that logically follow one another are instead edited together for unknown reasons (to heighten the pace? To mask the fact that the action featured within them is dull?), flashbacks to already-shown incidents are included for those with limited memories, and Kidman is asked to do little other than race around or, depending on the company she's keeping, act frightened or vacant. Her shrink's motivation during the spreading invasion is to rescue her son Oliver (Jackson Bond), whom she unfortunately dropped off with her ex-husband Tucker (Jeremy Northam), a Center for Disease Control bigwig corrupted by the virus who's intent on using a nationwide inoculation program to secretly infect the entire population. Child-in-peril tension is thus milked for all its worth. But since there isn't a single character who's more than a cardboard cut-out defined by their profession, attempts to exploit kid-related fears prove wholly unproductive.

Nonetheless, lame as its suspense is, it's far preferable to Hirschbiegel and company's efforts to contemporize their allegorical tale for the new millennium. At a high society dinner, Kidman and Craig suffer through a Russian ambassador's ominous, preachy sermon about how the War in Iraq and the crises in Darfur and New Orleans prove that mankind isn't evolving, and that a world without such catastrophes would, in fact, have to be one that was - dum-dum-dum-DUM! - not populated by humans at all. And wouldn't you know, as the virus spreads, cable news begins reporting that worldwide peace (as well as happy Bush-Hugo Chavez relations!) has suddenly been achieved, thanks solely to the impassive alien-human hybrids' harmonious, interconnected relationship to one another. Consequently, Kidman's heroine (and, presumably, the audience) is forced to grapple with the choice between man's flawed society and an alternate, inhuman - yet-conflict-free - one, a supposedly vexing moral dilemma that the film handles with the same intelligence, attention to detail, and subtlety with which it handles the rest of its narrative. By which I mean none.