Intelligent. Far better than expected Perhaps more irritating than those paid high-rated reviews are those guys sent to defame a film. In this thread, viewers which rated 1 to 3 show a common element: abscense of foundations for their opinions, which make them so suspicious. Or maybe the critics are sincere, but people have mentally declined so much that we don't understand (or enjoy) a film unless it abounds on blood and (very expensive) action and special effects.
Complainers say acting was horrible without even mentioning seasoned and well-tested actors like Mary McCormack and Richard Schiff; (apparently some viewers think that just saying "bad" is enough to make something bad). Just watch the film and see what was so bad with the acting; I could not find it. Being enthusiastic, a more discerning viewer observed that "The two main actors in this movie give a much better performance than 99% of the actors you see in a big budget sci fi, but neither of them is really 'good looking', so this is all they get."
Many 1-to-3-raters protest that the movie screams "low budget", not realizing that the story does not need any high budget.
Disgruntled viewers claim that the screenplay was insipid, while in truth they should have said that they did not understand it. Some proclaim their own limitations: "There is basically too much talking and philosophising which gets confusing and boring"; "(the film) needed some space battles or something..."; "unintelligible dark plot lines that end in predictable nihilistic philosophical jumbles".
To be honest, the final hero-extraterrestrial dialogue is a little too philosophical, but that is somehow inevitable. On films dealing with time, the ending usually is confusing and implies a contradiction; very few time travel stories succeed in avoiding incongruencies. In Alien Code the situation is somehow worse than having a time loop, parallel times or time travel. Here we have NO time at all. Humans entered in contact with beings which perceive everything happening at the same time: timeless creatures.
And the end has to be nihilistic: If everything already happened at the same time, there is nothing we could do. For those who did not watch it, the plot resumes in two questions: "What if time weren't always linear?" and "you've done something wrong. If you could go back in time would you change what you did" (The film's answer to the first question is "yes, for some ETs isn't linear", and to the second is the nihilistic "it is not possible to change anything".)
As almost always in the Hollywood conspiratorial world, the behaviour of the powerful bad guys is ominous (except perhaps the ever silent MIB, who were intended as menacing but came across as cartoonish, cliched and comical). What is not properly explained here is why the government, the military or the dark corporation are doing what they do. They believe they are building a doomsday weapon? In the end the hero realizes it is not a gun, so why the bad guys could not realize it as well? Why the extraterrestrials weren't clear about it in their documents?
Though I find this film very very good, some may disagree with the last part. The ending felt rushed, not explained enough. While the movie introduced several complex concepts, none of them received a shockingly novel treatment. The "baldies" were excellent characters for a suspense movie, but they were not given enough screen time, or a purpose.
But these are minor flaws. Generally speaking, this is FAR better than the rating it has received.