The Invasion

Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Jeremy Northam, Jeffrey Wright, Jackson Bond, Veronica Cartwright
Running Time: 99 min.
Rating: PG-13

** (out of ****)

The Invasion is an exercise in futility. There's little reason it should have been (re-) made and even less of a reason anyone should bother seeing it, unless watching two big stars collect fat paychecks interests you. They've certainly earned them here. The umpteenth adaptation of Jack Finney's 1954 serialized story, The Body Snatchers (better known by its film title, Invasion of the Body Snatchers) brings nothing new or fresh to the source material, which makes you wonder why anyone in the first place thought this story was begging to be updated for current times.

This film is now nearly infamous for sitting on the shelf for more than a year, enduring numerous re-shoots and directors and even resulting in several broken ribs for Nicole Kidman. All of this sounds a whole lot more interesting than the final product we see onscreen and the controversy surrounding the film is probably the only reason anyone may be interested in seeing it.

It's tough to decifer where the blame lies exactly as director Oliver Hirschbiegel was robbed of final cut by the studio and the film was handed over to the Wachowski brothers who did re-writes on the script and brought in V for Vendetta director James McTeigue. Their efforts, thankfully for them, go uncredited. Regardless of whatever mish-mash of visions we ended up with, I'm not trying to toss blame, just warn you that it isn't worth a watch. The problems in production are actually visible onscreen, as the film, other than a semi-exciting finale, is rather flat and boring, lacking any kind of distinctive rhythm. Scenes don't flow into one another and seem thrown together, a tip-off that the movie's failure could be traced to problems at the screenplay and editing stages, with no one being able to agree what kind of film they were trying to make. Having two different directors and three different writers couldn't have helped.

Nicole Kidman is divorced psychiatrist Carol Bennell, whose ex-husband Tucker (Jeremy Northam) is a CDC director investigating a Challenger-like space shuttle crash. Attached to the wreckage and debris from the shuttle is a gooey alien substance that infects anyone who comes in contact with it, resulting in a loss of emotion when they enter deep sleep. Upon awakening, they're essentially "pod people" walking around like zombies with no feelings whatsoever. They also start to look disgusting and vomit a lot. After her ex-husband is infected and attempts to use the CDC to spread the plague, Carol must protect their son, Oliver (Jackson Bond) from his father while saving herself from becoming a pod person. If that sounds silly, how it plays out is even sillier as she recruits the help of her best "friend", Dr. Ben Driscoll (Daniel Craig) and his biologist buddy (Jeffrey Wright) to stop the epidemic.

The major problem here is that there's no sense of normalcy at the beginning of the picture, so when the plague does occur it doesn't have much of an emotional impact. Every character in the film (especially Kidman's and Craig's) seem like emotionless zombies right from the get-go so there really isn't much of a transformation to undergo. We're also so familiar with the story (that's been told nearly half a dozen times) that we know what's happening a good thirty to forty minutes before anyone in the movie does. This results in a lack of suspense and some scenes even evoke unintentional laughter, specifically the ones featuring projectile vomiting. The movie is at its strongest in the third act when Carol is on the run and the script shifts focus to the mother-son bond and that's mainly because of a good performance from young Jackson Bond as the boy.

As usual, the media has leveled all the blame for this movie's critical and commercial at Kidman, with her detractors using it as further evidence that she needs a new agent. They'll also probably get a good laugh out of the fact she's portraying a character struggling not to become an emotionless robot. That's unfair though because out of her recent box office flops this is actually the only one that deserved to fail and could qualify as a misstep on her part. She should continue along the path she's been going taking big risks like Dogville, Birth, and Fur while staying clear of mainstream sci-fi garbage like this. She's the type of actress who responds best to a daunting challenge and unless one is given to her she tends to falter. The movie's failure has nothing to do with her, but admittedly, this is far from her best work. She looks as bored as we are and director Hirschbiegel seems more interested in making her look as photogenic as possible (which isn't difficult) than squeezing an inspired performance out of her. Craig, however, is even worse. His Ben Driscoll is painfully underwritten but he's nothing but a wet blanket in the role and there were times I actually worried he would doze off onscreen. 007 this guy is not, that's for sure. Jeffrey Wright, a gifted supporting actor, is also completely wasted in a role that's way beneath him.

Watching the special features on this DVD you'd think the filmmakers were adapting the deepest, most philosophical American saga to ever be put on celluloid. I hate to burst their bubbles but they're not, as attempts to put a Bush-era spin on a film that in 1956 so effectively exploited Cold War paranoia and McCarthyism is half-hearted and ineffective. Other than a fascinating dinner scene where the sociological implications of the invasion is explored the film often comes off as a sci-fi spoof rather than a important meditation on the world we live in. At least the production design and cinematography are top notch, which sadly just tells me a lot of money was wasted in creating a product that couldn't live up to its meager promise. There's even a shout-out to the 1978 remake as one of the stars of that film, actress Veronica Cartwright, has a small part. It's something only the hardest of hardcore fans would notice or care about and just serves to remind us this material has been re-made a few too many times.

It's tough judging a film when you can't point any fingers or toss blame in any one direction, but a misfire like this reminds us that most of the time failure is a corroborative effort. Often the more names the worse. My guess is that Hirschbiegel and screenwriter Dave Kajganich had some good ideas in there somewhere and were undermined by an untrusting studio. But that's just a guess. What isn't a guess though is if you're adapting a story that's been done many times over in this era of pointless remakes, you better bring something interesting to the table. The end result isn't so much awful as it is an uninspired mess of ideas and dots that don't connect. When the final credits rolled, and all the creative contributors to the film were listed, the last thing I couldn't help but think that Ed Wood's name wouldn't seem that out of place among them. Then again, at least his movies were fun.