I Come in Peace (1990) Triumph Releasing Corporation/Action-Sci-Fi RT: 91 minutes Rated R (language, strong violence, brief nudity, drugs) Director: Craig R. Baxley Screenplay: Jonathan Tydor and Leonard Maas Jr. Music: Jan Hammer Cinematography: Mark Irwin Release date: September 28, 1990 (US) Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Brian Benben, Betsy Brantley, Matthias Hues, Jay Bilas, Jim Haynie, David Ackroyd, Sherman Howard, Sam Anderson, Mark Lowenthal, Michael J. Pollard, Jesse Vint, Alex Morris. Box Office: $4.3 million (US)
Rating: ***
No wonder I couldn’t find this campy 1990 sci-fi/actioner on DVD, it was released under its international title Dark Angel. To me, it will always be I Come in Peace, the movie whose entire plot can be described in five words- Dolph Lundgren vs. an alien. Lundgren (Red Scorpion) plays Houston vice cop Jack Caine whose partner is killed during an undercover operation to take down a vicious gang of white collar drug dealers known as The White Boys.
Unable to prevent his friend’s death because he was stopping a convenience store robbery, Caine vows to bring down the leader Victor Manning (Howard, Day of the Dead), no matter how many police procedures he violates in the process. The FBI gets involved because the White Boys stole a huge shipment of heroin from a federal evidence warehouse and blew up the building, killing many law enforcement agents. They order Caine to work with Special Agent Larry Smith (Benben, Dream On), a young agent whose by-the-book attitude clashes with the cop’s maverick ways. During their investigation, they discover a mysterious object that turns out to be the weapon that killed Caine’s partner and several of Manning’s men. It looks like a CD, but it has razor sharp edges and flies through the air, slicing the necks of its targets.
Meanwhile, a series of drug-related deaths has everybody baffled. Although the victims’ corpses have a lot of heroin in their systems, they didn’t actually die of an overdose. It turns out that an extraterrestrial drug dealer (Hues) is on the loose. He’s injecting people with heroin and extracting endorphins from their brains, which will be used to manufacture a narcotic substance that’s popular with the addicts on his home planet. He greets each one of his victims with a single four-word phrase “I come in peace.” before he killing them. Caine and Smith aren’t the only ones after the intergalactic baddie, an extraterrestrial cop (Bilas) from the same planet wants to bring him down as well.
No two ways about it, I Come in Peace is junk, pure B-movie junk! Damned if it isn’t also a lot of fun! You can’t take a movie like this seriously, not for even a minute, and the filmmakers appear to understand this. Director Craig R. Baxley (Stone Cold) combines two distinct genres- violent sci-fi and kick-ass action- and makes an enjoyable flick that never aspires to be anything more than a cool three-star matinee picture. It totally succeeds!
He may not be a great actor, but Dolph is no worse than any other monosyllabic action star, he’s on par with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. He even gets a love interest in the form of coroner Diane Pallone (Brantley, The Fourth Protocol) who just wants him to make a stronger commitment to their relationship. Thankfully, we’re spared any attempt by Lundgren to emote, something like that could have derailed the entire movie. Let’s face it, he’s good at kicking ass and blowing people away, but I doubt that he could effectively pull off anything even remotely dramatic. Fine by me, I don’t want to see anything like that, not here anyway. Benben does a good job as the yuppie FBI agent who may or may not have a hidden agenda.
As I watched Dolph take on that really big alien (7 feet tall!), I remembered the sheer pleasure of watching Arnold Schwarzenegger take on a similar opponent in the classic 1987 sci-fi/actioner Predator. Complete with cheesy special effects and dopey dialogue, I Come in Peace is the perfect grindhouse flick! It tells a good story with lots of action, lots of violence and lots of mayhem. A B-movie aficionado like myself isn’t about to pass up a movie like this.
