Sender, The |
  • USA • 1998 • 98m •   • Directed by: Richard Pepin. • Starring: Michael Madsen, R. Lee Ermey, Robert Vaughn, Dyan Cannon, Steven Williams, Shelli Lether, Brian Bloom, Josh Clark, Erica Everage, Carlos Lauchu, Arminae Austen, Francis Fallon, Rance Howard. • Music by: John Sponsler.     In 1965, an American fighter squadron encountered a spaceship while flying over the Bermuda Triangle. After getting into a brief dogfight with it, one of the fighters is shot down, and the others agree to keep what they've seen a secret. Years later, the downed aircraft is recovered, and the son of the missing pilot insists on seeing it. Soon, strange ocurrences start happening around the son and his family. Could there be any connection with what his father witnessed?
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The movie begins in the Bermuda Triangle where a flight of Chance-Vought F4U Corsairs is attacked by a flying saucer in 1965. The lead plane is blown up, killing the pilot. The other pilots are then told to hush the whole thing up. One small gaffe though: the venerable F4U Corsair was originally a WWII-era plane, and the US military had stopped flying them (at least in combat units) many years earlier. A minor point maybe to most people, but still....if you're going to go to the trouble of making a movie, you might as well do it right, so it's believable. But we'll let that go for now.
Fast forward to modern times..... the government has found the plane that blew up, and brought it ashore. The son of the pilot, Dallas Greyson (Michael Madsen) wants to look at the airplane. But "man-in-black" Rosewater (R. Lee Emery, who looks like every drill sergeant you've ever seen) won't let him see it. Then the plane gets stolen from Edwards AFB by ufologists, who are going to use it to expose the truth to the American people. There follows an exciting car chase sequence where Greyson fights it out with one of the robbers on a speeding flatbed, while being chased by Rosewater's commandos. Rosewater shoots the driver, and the truck careens out of control toward a tractor trailer. All the vehicles crash with huge explosions, but Greyson escapes by shooting out the coupling to the flatbed. Wow!
Rosewater wants to charge Greyson with treason, but is told to release him by his boss Lockwood (Stephen Williams, looking like a modern-day Dennis Rodman!) Then Greyson goes to the hospital and gets his daughter Lisa, who's dying of cancer, and takes her home, where there's a big party being thrown by Robert Vaughn's character, a retired Admiral named Fairfax who's Greyson's best friend.
That night a beautiful, sexy, silver-clad Angel (Shelli Leather) materializes in Lisa's room and teaches her how to make a ball. Just then Rosewater's black-ops team shows up and kidnaps the girl, and Rosewater kills Greyson! But Angel re-materializes and brings him back to life. She then warns him that there's a bomb in the house, and there's a few tense moments as Greyson runs inside to grab his gun. Then there's a slow-motion scene of Greyson and Angel running away from the house as it explodes in an enormous fireball right behind them! Angel gets into Greyson's car and tells him to drive her to the desert. When Greyson and Angel get to the desert, Angel takes all her clothes off, and she tells Greyson she's a space alien. In the meantime Rosewater tells Lockwood the killing was an accident, but then he finds out that Greyson's body has disappeared, and Rosewater demands that his boss tell him everything. Lockwood reveals that Greyson's family has gotten hold of some kind of strange alien power.
While sitting in a restaurant, Angel reveals to Greyson that his daughter is a "Sender"... a person who's capable of interstellar travel! That's why Rosewater kidnapped her. Just then two of Rosewater's men walk into the restaurant, but Angel senses them, and Greyson throws them out when they try to arrest him.
Now there's another exciting car chase, this time through the desert! Angel uses her alien powers to blow up most of the cars chasing them, killing scores of government hit men. The van containing the first two guys hits a hay truck and smashes into a million pieces. Greyson and Angel think they've escaped, but then there's a black helicopter shooting at them! Greyson and Angel fly away in her spacecraft, scaring off the helicopter pilot, who realizes it's not from this world. Meanwhile Lisa escapes from Rosewater and Lockwood. She finds herself in a city full of homeless people, where Greyson and Angel track her down. But unfortunately so does Rosewater's black-ops team! Rosewater grabs the girl. Greyson runs away, with Rosewater yelling after him "How many lives do you have anyway Greyson?"
Now there's the most exciting sequence in the movie, with more black helicopters chasing Greyson and Angel in their spacecraft through the city's skyscrapers, shooting at them. Some of the shots miss, blowing out the sides of skyscrapers and accidentally shooting each other down. (Fortunately there don't seem to be any witnesses to the battle.) But some of the bullets hit home, and the saucer crashes. So Greyson and Angel steal an automobile and go to an observatory, where Greyson tries to locate Angel's home planet, but it can't be seen. Angel explains to Greyson that she killed his father, but it was an accident, because he got too close. She tells him she's been spying on his family for years, and as a result realized that humans aren't barbarians after all. It's a somewhat confusing segment, but it brings them closer together and they kiss.
Greyson calls Admiral Fairfax for help. But they are betrayed by Fairfax's beautiful wife (Dyan Cannon), who turns out to be a spy, even though she swore she wasn't when they got married. There's another wild car chase, but this time they're all taken into custody. However Angel uses her alien powers to get free. Fairfax ties up his wife as she tries to "reason" with him, but finally he silences her with a gag. They sneak into the secret facility where Lisa is being held. However Faifax's wife finally manages to alert the guards with her lively "mmmmmph"ing. A long, furious gun battle ensues....
Well there's lots more, but I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen this movie yet!
Review by Unknown from the Internet Movie Database.
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