Canadian sci-fi/action flick ALIEN AGENT (2007) began as a somewhat more ambitious vehicle for Dolph Lundgren. First announced in 2000, it went through several proposed cast members and directors (including Sidney J. Furie, John Fries, and Roger Christian), and an apparent reduction in scope, before finally going before the cameras in 2006 with "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven" star Mark Dacascos in the lead and acclaimed stunt coordinator Jesse Johnson (PIT FIGHTER) in the director's chair.
Dacascos plays Rykker, an intergalactic lawman who is trying to stop fellow aliens Saylon (Billy Zane) and Isis (Amelia Cooke) from opening up a wormhole between their planet and Earth to facilitate their conquest of the human race.
After Isis and her goons murder the only remaining family of truckstop waitress Julie (Emma Lahana, "Power Rangers"), she hooks up with Rykker to help him stop the invaders and falls in love with him in the process. Meanwhile, the construction of a stargate between the two planets continues in an abandoned power station, where the final battle for Earth's fate will take place.
Despite the loftier aims initially attached to this project, the final result doesn't look much different from standard Sci-Fi Channel fare, but with extra violence and brief nudity added. Vlady Pildysh's sketchy script is pure pulp, with good aliens vs. bad aliens (who have taken over human bodies so that very little special makeup is required) battling each other with guns and martial arts in normal everyday settings. Even the stargate which features prominently in the finale is little more than a big, rotating plastic ring with some CGI sparkles added.
What ALIEN AGENT does have going for it is an abundance of action. Blazing shoot-em-ups and fierce hand-to-hand battles occur in quick succession with brief snippets of story to link them together. The martial arts sequences are well-staged and convincingly executed, and are edited so that the rapid-fire shots flow together very smoothly. The gunfights and car chases are similarly impressive, with an abundance of satisfying explosions and other mayhem.
One early moment which got my attention shows warrior woman Isis firing a bazooka from a moving truck and blasting the pursuing Rykker's car right off the road, all in one shot; another finds her blowing up half the cars and trucks in a parking lot as Rykker makes off in another vehicle. The only detriment in these scenes is director Johnson's unfortunate tendency to try and accentuate the action with jittery zoom-in, zoom-out camarawork, which never fails to make even big-budget movies look rinky-dink (as Michael Bay demonstrated in THE ROCK's big San Francisco car chase).
Dacascos, with his soulful demeanor and martial arts skills, is well-suited for the role of Rykker, while Emma Lahana makes for a spunky sidekick. On the bad alien side, Amelia Cooke plays a pretty convincing Isis, but Billy Zane doesn't appear to be investing much in the role of the evil leader Saylon; in fact, he seems to be having more fun playing the baseball-capped yahoo whose body Saylon inhabits upon his arrival on Earth. In a lesser role, the great Kim Coates, who was Chet in the celebrated "Touch me again, I'll kill ya" scene from THE LAST BOY SCOUT, makes a welcome appearance as a sniveling human scientist in league with his future alien overlords.
DVD specs include 1:78:1 widescreen, Spanish subtitles, and a trailer. This Allumination Filmworks release is rated R for violence and brief nudity, the latter consisting mainly of a nude shot of a showering Julie which appears to have been done by a body double with great abs.
Though not quite the sci-fi epic originally conceived, ALIEN AGENT is an action-packed diversion that's fun to watch as long as you keep your expectations low.
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