The Sender (1998)

Lack of good storyline.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

In 1965, US Air Force Captain Jack Grayson & his squadron are flying over the Bermuda Triangle when they encounter a massive alien spaceship. They engage the craft but Grayson is shot down. In the present day, the wreckage of Grayson's plane is found & shipped back home. When his son, Dallas, who is a Naval Commander with duties in Intelligence, tries to visit the wreckage, he is denied entry by Colonel Rosewater, a covert ops soldier. But somehow a pair of UFO nuts steal the truck containing the find & attempt to escape. They are killed by Rosewater & Dallas narrowly saves his father's plane from destruction. Back home, his cancer-stricken daughter Lisa is being visited by a mysterious alien woman who has been treating her illness & training her how to use her genetic ability to teleport objects across vast distances. Dallas is unaware of this but when Rosewater & his goons snatch Lisa & nearly kill him, Dallas is contacted by the woman. Calling herself Angel, she reveals herself to be an alien operative who has watched over the family for generations. Together they attempt to rescue Lisa from the Black Ops team that took her, as well as trying to stop Rosewater & his army of assassins from killing them in the process.Richard Pepin & Joseph Merhi formed PM Entertainment in the early 1990s. First an independent production company with little stature despite Merhi's previous experience as a low-budget action director with films like The Glass Jungle, they had an unexpected success when one of their ultra-cheap action thrillers, CIA: Codename Alexa, became a surprise hit on cable TV when one of its stars, O.J. Simpson, was put on trial in the now legendary murders of his wife & her lover. The film's notoriety, plus the cult success of Pepin's own directorial effort, the Terminator templater CYBER TRACKER, put PM on the map & gave them the ability to turn PM into the major player of the DTV action market in the 1990s.In addition to producing all of their studio's films, Pepin & Merhi took a tag team approach to directing as well. They picked some films & split the workload between themselves, with Merhi directing some action films while Pepin would handle the sci-fi themed ones. Pepin's films in particular would become minor cult classics due to their love of massive shootouts, brutal action sequences & in particular the "Pepin flip" where a vehicle would smash into another vehicle, fly over it & flip over in mid-flight while the impacted vehicle would explode in a massive fireball (The Sender has two of these).As for The Sender, Pepin has been starting to wind down the care that he had given his earlier films & quality has started to slide. The action scenes in The Sender are not as spectacular as previous Pepin films & are not as brutal either. But Pepin has compensated somewhat by adding more dialogue. This would not have been bad if the story was fully fleshed out instead of being haphazardly plotted – there is no sense to the various covert ops teams working on secret projects, UFO sightings, the apparently genetically obtained ability of Michael Madsen's young daughter to teleport objects across vast distances or even the involvement of the ethereal female alien who can shapeshift & also teleport but not as well as her human friend. And almost no mention or even exposition relating the UFO nuts who break into the hangar & steal the plane wreckage (or at least attempt to). The result is a B-grade genre actioner that has some reasonable action scenes & okay effects but a badly-written script & poor plotting. And the sudden return of Madsen's father at the end as a sort of happy ending is kind of stupid.

I just have to say this: The worst thing about this movie was Michael Madsen acting. Does this guy even have any expressions? During the entire movie the feeling I got from him was "yeah, so?".Never excited, never raises his voice, never acts like any more than a cardboard cutout. The movie would have been a lot better if he wasn't in it.Overall, this movie wasn't quite as bad as some of the others would have you believe. I had just bought 4 stinkers to watch during the weekend (I like watching bad movies). This movie was the best of the lot (which tells you how bad the other movies were).In this movie, aliens can travel anywhere because their females have a "sender gene". They had made sure that over the years no humans with this gene were allowed to continue on, although they never explain exactly how that was accomplished. Enter Michael Madsen's character and his daughter, who of course has the gene. The government wants her, and the aliens are trying to strengthen her gift because they accidentally killed her grandfather. The hottie alien in this case has gotten to know humans and now believes they aren't as bad as previously thought.So, we have (too many) gun battles where Michael Madsen likes to hold his gun sideways like an idiot "gangsta" or something. They never run out of ammo (hey, isn't that so last century?). Of course, no one but the heroes ever hit anything even though they are up against soldiers with M16s. Speaking of soldiers, they should have gotten them uniforms that fit. They looked pretty dumb. Also too many car chases where our heroes always get away.This could have been a good movie. There were some good actors in it, and overall the acting was OK (except for Michael Madsen).Also, they should have gotten rid of the bleached blond black guy with the one earring who was supposed to be in charge. He was a horrible actor, and his "look" didn't fit the part at all. He looked like he should be dressing the performers back stage at a theatrical stage show.The best actor in the movie (and I guess he's a bit of a character actor) was R. Lee Ermey as the bad ass Colonel Rosewater, but I've never seen him be bad at any part he's played.Got nothing to do? Bored? Only movie in the $3 bin you haven't seen? Buy it and watch it once. Better than nothing.

Now don't get me wrong - I like Michael Madsen; He has a certain screen presence about him that always somewhat lifts any production he appears in. However, one thing I don't like about the chap is his ostensible arrogance and aloofness as regards certain films in which he has found himself. In fact he is very openly and vocally critical regarding many of the productions with which he has been involved. Certainly I appreciate honesty (and in the ghastly false world of Hollywood it is truly a rare phenomenon!) but I have always found the WAY in which Madsen airs his disdain to be highly disrespectful to all those who have no doubt worked hard around him. In fact Madsen himself has been quoted as citing, '...These horrifying straight-to-video things'(!) for which he received 'Very little money'. Such is obviously the case in point with the film in question in fact; Clearly, this is one of the very films he refers to and his subsequent response to ending up in such a production? - He gives a deliberately dreadful performance so as to indicate his vast superiority to the relevant material. OK, so Madsen at his very best could hardly be listed anywhere remotely near in the same ranks as the Olivier's or the Brandon's of the world but there is simply no excuse for such a monumentally lazy performance as he turns in here.Rant over now and what of the actual film aside from Madsen's lacklustre effort? Well, it's a fairly run of the mill affair at best in fact (but this STILL does not excuse Madsen's antics!) but is harmless enough viewing for ninety or so minutes. With director Richard Pepin on board you can of course count on some good action scenes and he doesn't disappoint including some cool freeway chases (and explosive crashes!) However, the best thing about this for me was the absolutely beautiful alien lady in it! - Truly she is stunning to behold and lit up the screen every time she appeared.For fellow PM fans, this is sadly probably one of their weakest efforts it has to be said, yet it isn't without its moments.

Love Michael Madsen! Unfortunately, if you take out ALL the chase scenes and ALL the explosions, and ALL the gunfights, the movie last a good 15 minutes. You want action, you get action, you want a story or some sort of recognizable plot look elsewhere. It's a time killer on a rainy Saturday afternoon.