Enemy Mine

Another of the movies that made it into the FXM rotation recently is Enemy Mine. Its next airing will be tomorrow at 10:45 AM, so I recently watched it to do a post on here.

The movie is set in the relatively distant future of the late 21st century. Earthlings have figured out the problem of the speed of light being the maximum speed, as they've gone out into the universe and developed other planets. This has put them into conflict with another species, the Dracs. Dennis Quaid plays Willis Davidge, a space fighter pilot for Earth, who has the sort of rah-rah attitude that would be considered stereotypical if it occurred in a John Wayne war movie.

Unfortunately, Davidge's ship gets shot down in a battle with the Dracs, although his crew also shoots down the Drac ship, the two spacecraft amazingly surviving the journey through the atmosphere and winding up on a planet that can support both human and Drac life, albeit a planet that's otherwise harsh and forbidding.

Conveniently enough for the plot, the two ships come down on the planet relatively close to one another, so that they can continue their combat on the surface. At least, that's the intent of the two warriors, but it doesn't quite go that way as an intense meteor shower occurs, with enough of the meteorites hitting the surface at a big enough size that any one of the meteorites would kill both of them. So Davidge and the reptilian-looking Drac, named Jeriba (Louis Gossett Jr.) make their way to a cave to wait out the meteor shower.

It looks as though the two are going to be stranded on the planet for some time, so they start an uneasy alliance, sort of like the Frank Sinatra movie None But the Brave. Of course, it's a bit hard to find the Dracs too menacing once you hear their language which rolls its R's so badly it sounds like a parody of a brrrrrrrogue. And the movie is only going to get more and more ridiculous, but in a good way.

The Dracs are hermaphroditic, and somehow Jariba has gotten pregnant, which seems surprising to me in that I don't think the Dracs would sent the regnant off to fight. This especially when they have a tradition of reciting the heritage of their young back five generations in a ceremony on the Drac home world. Jariba and Davidge have by this time learned some of each other's languages, and Davidge actually seems to have some respect for Drac traditions.

But Jariba dies as a result of a difficult childbirth, leaving Davidge to try to care for a baby. Making matters worse is that there are earthlings who mine planets for the mineral wealth. That in and of itself is no big deal, but they use captured Drac slave labor to do it. And they come to this planet, so there's no way Davidge and Jariba's kid, named Zammis, are going to get help.

As I said, the plot of Enemy Mine veers into something that requires extensive suspension of disbelief, even more than most science fiction movies. It had me laughing at times when it was probably inappropriate to be laughing, but it was still a pretty good movie. The effects are good for the 1980s, and don't look like the CGI effect of today that have a tendency to leave me cold.

I don't think I'd heard of Enemy Mine before seeing it show up on the FXM schedule, and I'm glad I watched it. It does seem to be available on DVD, too.