The Silencers (1996)

What a waste of my time!!!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

On the surface, THE SILENCERS is a run-of-the-mill "aliens on Earth" movie, filled with action and yet has a lot of heart. Yes, it's low budget, and some of the special effects are cringe-worthy, but despite this, it is an interesting film, especially for those that know their UFO lore. The screenplay is packed with obscure references that are based in actual UFO case studies that are found in many, although little known published accounts. Most notably, the alien backstory is taken directly from the "Billy Meier" UFO contact notes that gained international attention back in the late '70s and other "true" UFO accounts from that era. Obviously the story was well-researched and is faithful to actual UFO case histories. For the casual viewer, the film holds your attention and is surprisingly enjoyable extraterrestrial romp, but for the hard-core UFO enthusiast, there is a lot to appreciate.

THE SILENCERS is a low budget action Sci-Fi thriller produced by the PM entertainment group and if you know their films you already know that almost every scene is a set up for either a major gunfight, a high speed chase or a lot of very big explosions, with that said THE SILENCERS delivers on everything.The film does have a plot of course although I'm not going sum it up because the main reason to recommend this film for is the action scenes, they are thoroughly entertaining, very well staged and they don't appear random or forced.The acting is pretty good, the best performances are given by Jack Scalia and Dennis Christopher in the lead roles and the direction by Richard Pepin is well handled.Other films from the PM entertainment group include FIREPOWER, RIOT, RECOIL, LAND OF THE FREE, T-FORCE and HOLOGRAM MAN and this is just naming a few.

Jack Scalia headlines in this somewhat low brow effort from the PM guys as a government agent who goes head to head against a Men In Black plot to bring forth unto our world, a conquering army via an inter-dimensional portal. Sounds bad eh? Well, luckily for our hero, he is aided by a friendly alien named Comdor who has been sent through the same portal in order to close it forever. Yes, it's a buddy movie at heart with Scalia as the hard as nails and down to earth 'cop' and Dennis Christopher playing the naive yet charming alien who eventually, naturally wins over his new found partners hard exterior and warms his heart etc.....(the sort of plot we've seen a zillion times before in fact).What can I say? Sadly, this turns out to be a strictly by the numbers affair and is not helped any by some particularly groan inducing attempts at light hearted humour. It's doubly a shame as the notion of covert agencies such as the infamous MIB's provide such wonderful scope for storytelling; Alas, it was sadly mostly squandered here and cheap special effects scenes such as the actual portal itself hardly help matters any.Having said the above, all is not entirely lost for this is after all a PM Production and if there's one thing that you can always count on from a PM flick it's plenty of crazy action scenes! Sure enough this delivers insane stunts and action aplenty from insane freeway chases to some well handled shoot outs. For fellow PM fans it's certainly worth a peek but don't expect too much - you'll likely be somewhat underwhelmed.

I have no joke, I just like saying "Your methods are crude. Effective, but crude."Cheesy, but decent. Car chases, train chases, gunfights, explosions, people who emit mysterious cool-looking force waves from their mouths, and of course the required anti-violence, pro-environment message. As a bonus, the aliens are total hotties. If nothing else, watch it to see Dennis Christopher communing with a potted palm.