Review for Enemy Mine

Introduction

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to watch Enemy Mine again. I first saw it as a youngster on TV, and was taken with it enough to videotape it the second time around. But I can’t remember actually re-watching the video, indeed I might have taped over it in a pinch. On top of that, I’ve had the DVD check disc lying around for the last ten years, with a mental note burning in my brain to watch it when I have a free evening. That didn’t transpire either. It was only the Eureka Entertainment press release last winter, looking forward to some new UK Blu-rays of classic eighties movies that finally settled the deal. Once again I’m faced with the worrying realisation that I only have the time to watch a movie if I’m going to review it!


It’s a truism that opposites and odd couples make for the more interesting character dynamics in cinema. Put two antagonistic people in close proximity, make them have to co-operate and co-exist, and let the sparks fly. It’s what makes buddy cop movies so compelling, with films like Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and Red Heat (although I might draw the line at Stop or My Mom Will Shoot), of course you have comedies like The Odd Couple or Midnight Run. You can take films of a more serious bent too, like The Defiant Ones, and you can’t more antagonistic and intense than war movies. John Boorman’s Hell in the Pacific had an American G.I. stranded with a Japanese soldier on a desert island, two enemies forced to co-operate. You might think that you couldn’t get more antagonistic a pairing, more different and odd a couple than a couple of enemies, but in 1985, Wolfgang Petersen’s Enemy Mine went one step further, making the enemies human and alien as well.


By the year 2100, mankind had finally united in peace, and started exploring and colonising the galaxy. That might have been a happy ending right then and there, were it not for the Drac, an alien race that had the temerity to go after the planets that humanity wanted as prime real estate. War was the result. It’s a dogfight that brings pilot Willis Davidge into direct conflict with the Drac, a dogfight that goes badly for both of them. While he shoots down a Drac fighter, his ship is damaged in return, and forced to crash land on a barren isolated world. The Drac ejected, and with vengeance in his heart, Davidge goes hunting to finish him off. Only it turns out that this world is more hostile to the two survivors than they are to each other, and the only way that Davidge and the Drac, Jeriba can survive is if they work together.

Picture

Enemy Mine gets a 2.35:1 widescreen 1080p transfer. It’s another fine transfer from Eureka Entertainment, who do the essential minimum in preparing a film for Blu-ray presentation, ensuring the print is clean and stable, without post-processing it into de-grained DNR’d homogeneity. Enemy Mine looks proper filmic on this Blu-ray, with strong, consistent colours and great detail, bringing the film’s lavish set and production design across well. That said, I have to be curious about the film’s intent when it came to the effects, sets, and matte paintings. Certainly the model effects, created by ILM, seem curiously dated even for 1985. Off the back of Return of the Jedi, you might be forgiven for expecting more sophistication, but when it comes to the model work, the special effects sequences, and the planet-scapes, Enemy Mine looks a film twenty years older, reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe on Mars, or even Barbarella. I get the feeling that it was a deliberate choice, even though the film had its issues with budget as you can read with the enclosed booklet.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by Eureka Entertainment.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 5.0 Surround, and PCM 2.0 Stereo English, with English subtitles. This would have been a stereo production back in 1985, so the surround is pretty much an up-mix, giving the film a little more space without too many discrete surround extravagances. The dialogue is clear throughout, and once again, it’s only the occasional overuse of electronic music that dates the film, otherwise the score is mostly orchestral in feel.

Extras

The disc boots directly to a static menu, saving the copyright screen and anti-piracy message for the end of the feature.

Not advertised in the PR, and hidden away in the set-up menu, is a PCM 2.0 Isolated Music and Effects track.

In the extras you’ll find the film’s trailer, running to 1:59 in 1080i HD, while the Extended Scene might be 1080p, but it is a 4:3 upscale running to 3:07, the German dub version with English subtitles.

As mentioned, you also get a booklet, with an interesting essay on the troubled history of Enemy Mine by Craig Ian Mann. The booklet is 20 pages in length.

Conclusion

It happens pretty often these days when I watch old films, that I’m struck with just how relevant they still are, and in some cases more relevant now than when they were first released. Enemy Mine very much fits into that category. Take its mutually antagonistic leads. We have Willis Davidge, human, representing a race that wants to take its rightful place among the stars, investing and expecting returns from large scale colonisation (that rapacious nature taken to its extreme in the land-raping slave-owning Scavengers in the third act), and on the other side we have the Drac, Jeriba, a being who is spiritual, driven by its faith, living its life according to the words written in the holy book that never strays far from its side, the whole race justified in its territorial ambitions by divine right. When the film starts, the two sides are so antithetical that the only communication possible between them is violence. In 1985 the film may have been an allegory for the Cold War, but it’s far more appropriate to today’s War on Terror.


It’s a great, timeless story too, two initially antagonistic characters, forced to work together through circumstance, if only to survive, and slowly learning from each other, growing as people, and establishing close bonds as a result, winding up closer than brothers. It also avoids the trap of Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, by presenting and keeping Davidge and Jeriba as equals. They both have some of the skills necessary for survival, they both learn each other’s language, and while Jeriba learns to appreciate Davidge’s freedom and spontaneity, Davidge is woken to his inner spirituality by Jeriba.


What really impresses me about Enemy Mine is the creation of the Drac as an alien race, truly different, and unexpected. So often in sci-fi (usually Star Trek), aliens tend to be humans with funny ears or latex appliances, aliens only in the allegorical sense, or they’re presented as monsters that are just mindless threats. With Jeriba we get an intelligent being that truly feels alien, not only in appearance with a great make-up, but also in back-story, with the race presented as hermaphroditic. Finally Louis Gossett Jr. gives a truly otherworldly performance, not only in Jeriba’s body language, but also in the way that it speaks.


The look of Enemy Mine dates it. In terms of some of the production design and special effects, it feels like a weak effort, even for its mid-eighties era. But in every other respect, where it counts, Enemy Mine is still a strong film. The alien design work is exemplary, the story is excellent, and the characters engage your attention. And once again, I find a vintage film more relevant today, than when it was initially released.