The Brother From Another Planet (1984)

How fun was this. The Brother From Another Planet is about an alien refugee (Joe Morton) who crashes in the harbor off of Ellis Island. He makes his way (by chance, I guess, though the geography's a little suspect) to Harlem, where he has Problems because he doesn't understand Human Ways (like money) and also he's mute. But then he wanders into a bar populated with quirky regulars, and they adopt him!

We follow the Brother through his mundane travails (finding somewhere to live, a job), his weirdo quests (some stuff with drug dealers, some other stuff with a lady), and his pursuit by two bounty hunters, the Men in Black (John Sayles and the perennially foxy David Strathairn).

Fish-out-of-water scenes are, of course, obligatory for this kind of movie, and they often feel hackneyed. Not so here. In the hands of Sayles, Morton, and Strathairn, everything is fresh. I giggled the maximum amount when the Brother saw a crucifix for the first time. (Morton's reaction shots are always dynamite, actually.) There's also a very funny exchange between the Men in Black and the bartender, Odell:

Man 1: Beer.
Odell: What kind?
Man 2: Draft.
Man 1: On the rocks.

Now, this may just seem okay amusing, but Sayles and Strathairn's delivery really sells it: they're totally deadpan, but they still convey a confused panic at the bartender's question--and then Sayles' alien recovers with misplaced confidence: "On the rocks." ON THE ROCKS YOU GUYS. FOR BEER. OH THE HUMOR. No, really, it's a very funny scene.

A very funny scene.

The beer scene is a great way of introducing these two creepy villains. They are the vague menace hovering over the story, and while they're intimidating, no one is so frightened as to cooperate with them. This is one of my favorite running not-quite-gags in the movie, and it reaches its peak when they try to question a public servant about the Brother. She looks nervous for a second, and then she dispatches them with piles of paperwork and requests for verification of identity and employment.

The movie is admittedly uneven: its low-budget-ness, which really shines in the simple approach to alien tech (e.g. the Brother's eyeball surveillance, the Men in Black's imaginative alien fishing reel), makes for a pretty fucking boring climactic chase sequence. Also, I did not so much enjoy the drug subplot, which includes an atmospheric (by which I mean "tedious") tour of nighttime Harlem and culminates in the Brother doing something that made me very uncomfortable.

BUT: those few things aside, this movie has a lot of heart. It's filled with fun characters, and Morton holds everything together expertly. I don't think I can praise his performance enough: he's expressive, charismatic, sympathetic--and silent.

Finally, I have to end with some cool trivia: Joe Morton has the distinction of being the first actor to appear in two movies reviewed on this blog. (He played Keanu Reeves' commanding officer in Speed.) Also, John Sayles is clearly campaigning to be my new favorite director. Item 1: I liked this movie a lot. Item 2: he self-finances his movies by doctoring scripts. Item 3: IMDb informs me that in a poll two years ago, Mr. Sayles said that The Spirit of the Beehive is one of his 10 favorite movies. BOOM. Great job, John Sayles.