MOVIE REVIEW : ‘I Come in Peace’ Should Go Away

“I Come in Peace” (citywide) is stale through and through, derived from countless cop-buddy formula thrillers, drenched in violence and devoid of so much as a whiff of real life. So desperate are the filmmakers to come up with a fresh angle that they have the bad guy come from outer space.

He’s this big, long-haired blond dude (Matthias Hues) with albino contact lenses, standard issue for screen aliens, and he’s injecting half of Houston with fatal doses of high-grade heroin and then extracting them for the intense endorphins they have produced, which create for aliens an ecstatic high. He’s been followed by an alien cop (Jay Bilas) to no avail. It takes a local cop (Dolph Lundgren), your typical departmental maverick, to figure things out, eventually.

In the meantime, he’s been reluctantly teamed with a nerdy, obtuse, career-conscious FBI agent (Brian Benben). Lundgren looks great but still tends to act like a statue as well as resemble one; Benben is a capable comedian done in by tiresome, repetitive material. Craig R. Baxley directed, and Jonathan Tydor and Leonard Maas Jr. are credited with the script.

‘I COME IN PEACE’

A Triumph release of a Vision p.d.g. presentation. Executive producers Mark Damon, David Saunders. Co-producers Jon Turtle, Rafael Eisenman. Director Craig R. Baxley. Screenplay Jonathan Tydor, Leonard Maas Jr. Camera Mark Irwin. Music Jan Hammer. Production designer Phillip M. Leonard.cq Costumes Joseph Porro. Associate producer Ron Fury. Film editor Mark Helfrich. With Dolph Lundgren, Brian Benben, Betsey Brantley, Matthias Hues, David Ackroyd, Jim Haynie, Kevin Page, Robert Prentiss, Michael J. Pollard, Jesse Vint,cq Jay Bilas.

Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (for extreme violence).