If you are a sci-fi fan (I am), Enemy Mine is watchable, but it maintains an odd balance between the laughable and the melodramatic. There should be originally some pretense of a content message behind it, but what passes out is pure superficiality. More than US$33 million was spent on this futuristic version of Stanley Kramer's Defiant Ones - a much superior movie - with touches of John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific - also quite superior. Critic Gene Siskel, however, liked it and gave it his thumbs-up. His partner Roger Ebert gave it thumbs-down arguing that it had the potential to be a truly great space thriller with a mind and a heart, but instead only gave us an alien that was too human, and too familiar... Director Petersen always created films without an identifiable style or subject of his own. He was able to keep up with the suspense in The Boat, In the line of Fire and The Unending story, but had no epic vision (as Troy proved). This was a huge waste of money. Its anecdotal premise was older than old.
Review of Enemy Mine
