Film/Television Review: Roswell (1994)

1990s were good times for UFO enthusiasts. Most of the decade was spent waiting for the top secret US government to be unsealed for the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident – an event that was supposed to prove once for all that aliens actually did visit Earth and that humanity wasn’t alone in the universe. This spurned a lot of imagination and speculations, which, in turn, inspired American popular culture, most notably with immensely popular TV series The X-Files, based on that premise. One of the works that tried to deal with UFO phenomena in more serious manner was Roswell, 1994 television film produced and directed by Jeremy Kagan, often considered to be the most accurate depiction of what really happened in New Mexico during July 1947.

Script, co-written by Kagan and playwright Arthur, is based on UFO Crash at Roswell, book by Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt. Protagonist, played by Kyle MacLachlan, is the best known of all the historical figures directly involved with the incident – US Lt. Col. Jesse Marcel. The plot begins in 1970s when he, as an old man, attends reunion of the veterans of 509th Bombardment Group, unit that was stationed in Roswell Army Air Base thirty years earlier. Plot goes back in time and shows how Marcel, then in the rank of Major, received reports about local rancher Marc Brazel (played by Dwight Yoakam) finding strange debris in the area. Major Marcel comes to investigates and finds that the pieces of debris are made of strange unknown material and contain symbols that might be extraterrestrial in nature. He makes a mistakes of informing the public that the artefacts belonged to “flying saucer” which is enough to create media frenzy and bring newspaper reporters to small town. Soon afterwards, Major Marcel is summoned by his superiors to attend press conference and ordered to claim that the artefacts were actually remains of meteorological balloons. Marcel reluctantly, as a good soldier, obeys the order, but many decades later decides to find the actual truth behind it. In conversations with fellow veterans and other witnesses, he slowly discovers that there was another crash site, that the bodies were discovered and brought to base to be autopsied, and that those bodies weren’t human. Marcel also finds that many of such witnesses were coerced, bribed and in other ways made to keep their mouth shut about the whole incident.

Roswell was produced for cable television, but if not for 4:3 picture format, it could have passed for decently budgeted feature film. Kagan directs the film confidently, using Arizona locations, effective music by Elliott Golenthal and, most importantly, very impressive cast that involves many notable character actors in relatively small roles. Kyle MacLachlan is very confident in his role, playing the character who , as a younger man, has to deal with military bureaucracy and his own professional pride. He is also good as older Marcel who tries to solve mystery before he dies. His performance in that part of the film is helped by very convincing makeup. While Roswell looks like very effective and convincing docudrama in the first part, where the events are presented from Marcel’s own perspective and experiences, it is significantly worse in the second part, when Marcel tries to picture what went on from other peoples’ memories, which were often hazy and contradictory. The narrative Kagan tries to build isn’t particularly convincing and it looks more like mix of Hollywood fiction and popular UFO mythologies. Introduction of mysterious character of Townsend (played by Martin Sheen) who tries to ties the loose ends for Marcel by elaborating on far, complex and vast reaching government conspiracy, makes this film look a little bit like JFK, which used character of “X” for the same purposes. Comparisons with Stone’s film are, predictably, make Roswell looks much inferior. Yet, even with these flaws, it is still an entertaining, easily digestible film that could be recommended for viewers who like docudramas, regardless whether they believe in UFOs or not.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
Leofinance blog https://leofinance.io/@drax.leo

Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax
Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7