The Sender (1998)

• Year: 1998
• Released: 19 Feb 1999
• Country: United States
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0138089/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_sender
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: R
• Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
• Runtime: 98 min
• Writer: Nathan Long, Richard Preston Jr.
• Director: Richard Pepin
• Cast: Michael Madsen, R. Lee Ermey, Robert Vaughn
• Keywords: alien, alien invasion, spacecraft,

3.7/10

The Sender Storyline

In 1965, an American fighter squadron encountered a spaceship while flying over the Bermuda Triangle. After getting into a brief dogfight with it, one of the fighters is shot down, and the others agree to keep what they’ve seen a secret. Years later, the downed aircraft is recovered, and the son of the missing pilot insists on seeing it. Soon, strange ocurrences start happening around the son and his family. Could there be any connection with what his father witnessed?

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The Sender Movie Reviews

Moronic

This isn’t the worst movie I have watched this year – but pretty close.

Totally moronic “entertainment”.

Stupidities include our hero shooting the air hoses on the back of a truck to de-couple the trailer – huh? How is cutting the air to the brakes going to make the tractor unit and the flatbed part company?

There is a prolonged fight on the back of a (not very) speeding flatbed truck in which our hero (played by Michael Madsen) is punched in the face several times and doesn’t loose his sunglasses. Most people’s glasses will fall off if they sneeze too hard. This guy’s must have been stapled to his head, or maybe nailed – because Madsen’s performance makes the hero look like a potato faced plank of wood. He reacts to everything that happens to him and around him with a blank non-reaction that is incredible to watch. During the course of the movie this guy’s daughter is kidnapped, his house blown up, he’s shot three times in the chest, resurrected by an shape-shifting alien, told his daughter is capable of interstellar travel by thought alone, he sees innocent members of the public gunned down, is nearly killed several times, sees old friends betray him and then get killed in front of him, kills many many people with an endlessly self-reloading hand gun and throughout all this mayhem and carnage, wanders around looking like he is suffering from constipation. Nothing seems to surprise, shock, baffle, or amaze him. Nothing registers but blank bovine stupidity. The only time he becomes at all animated is during one of the interminable car chase sequences when one of the bad guy’s endless supply of black vans explodes right in front of him. Woooohoooo! Mongo like car crash!

The ending is horrendously overlong and Michael Madsen’s acting at the sight of his supposedly long dead father is a wonder to behold. His character has been supposedly obsessed by his father’s death and when he, miraculously, gets to meet him, what does he do? Sort of grunts a bit and looks even more constipated than normal for a moment then sends his daughter over: “Go meet your grandfather” He doesn’t even take his fecking sunglasses off!

I had previously thought Sterling Hayden was the worst actor in the history of ever (apart from me) but on the strength of this movie alone his position has been usurped by Madsen. At least you could hear what Hayden said. His lines may have been delivered like the mail but at least they were delivered and not mumbled into the top of his shirt.

Though, having said all that, the best bit of bad acting in this film comes pretty early on from someone else, Steven Williams as the evil Lockwood. Lockwood is asked a question by his evil underling and does some quick thinking. You can tell he is doing some quick thinking because his eyes quickly move from side to side like he’s watching an off-screen ping-pong game.

I wish I had been watching it with him and not this piece of sh!t. (The music is awful as well).

Oh dear.

This trash was so awful at points, i got angry. The car chases were devised on the back of the directors aspirations of this being an all out action flick with lots of crashes and lots of explosions. In truth, it resembled something i saw a few years ago starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd. Yes that one with all those police cars flying through the air..

The only difference here is that this was supposed to be taken seriously. I cringed when i saw a GMC truck outrun a Porsche 911! And why oh why did a car plummet head on into the side of a (yes another) GMC truck and instead of stopping it dead in its tracks like you would expect a 3-ton truck to do, the car flew into the air – over the truck, performed a mid-air roll and came crashing back down to earth just like you see in the opening credits of The A Team? At least the A Team was tongue in cheek! Then there’s the gun fights. Remember last action hero when it pointed out how heroes never seem to get hit by machine gun fire or reload their (damn) guns? The incompetent directors of this garbage didn’t seem to consider this rather large technicality.

I get the feeling Michael Madson was bribed into this role. Throughout the entire picture he had the same look on his face as he does in the Orange Advert at the cinema when hes in that phone box. Looks like the guys at orange got their man after all! If there had been even just one light hearted moment in this entire film, i wouldn’t have been near as disgusted at the farcical action scenes and linear dead pan (dare i call it) acting. If you ever have a choice between watching this and sticking a pair needles through your eyes, the latter would be a wiser choice.

Cheesy beyond belief

THE SENDER is a cheesy and unintentionally funny late ’90s sci-fi thriller, clearly made to tap into the success of THE X-FILES around that time. Hell, it even has Steven Williams (‘Mr. X’ from the show) present, complete with ridiculously dyed white hair.

Sadly this is a goofy messy of a movie, only worth watching to laugh at. Michael Madsen continues a trend of appearing in cheap B-movie action flicks and gives what can only be termed a wooden performance. There are some surprising faces in support, including Robert Vaughn and R. Lee Ermey, but it’s no surprise that the characters they’re playing are so stereotyped.

THE SENDER adopts an action template throughout, with lots of senseless shoot-outs and some ridiculous vehicle chases to enjoy. Also, you can play ‘spot Madsen’s stuntman’ throughout. Worst of all is the female alien, who turns up wearing a silver lame dress and glitter wig. At this point, you just know you’re not going to be able to take this film seriously anymore.