The Brother from Another Planet

A mute alien (Joe Morton) with the appearance of a black human is chased by outer-space bounty hunters through the streets of Harlem.

If this film had been made five years earlier, it might have fallen into the blaxploitation trap. But, luckily, this is not the case because it is above and beyond blaxploitation and in many ways far more clever. Rather than dwell on race, it just sort of accepts it.

There is the theme of immigration, though it is not heavy-handed and the viewer can choose to see this as a parable or not. They can choose to see it as science fiction or not. (Obviously it is, but it is light.) There is plenty of room for a viewer to imprint his or her own thoughts on to the story and make it their own.

Bonus: Fisher Stevens shows up.

When Rod Serling created the classic "Twilight Zone" TV show, he presented it as a harmless fantasy/SF show when it was actually a series of morality plays.

In this film you have John Sayles' take on the same concept. He talks a standard SF cliche -- the stranded ET -- and uses it as the jumping-off place for a story about something altogether different. He doesn't appear at the end, like Serling, and tell you what the moral or message was.

Rather than talk about all that (art appreciation and interpretation is pretty much a subjective affair), I would like to say a word or two about the performance of Mr. Joe Morton as the eponymous character:

Zowie!

The Brother is totally mute. And yet Morton's performance knocks the poop out of any piece of acting you could name. Human and humane, empathetic and sympathetic. This guy will have you laughing and crying right along with him.

An incredible performance. Well worth the price of the rental, and the popcorn, and the gas that you burned up picking it up and...

With a ridiculous title as this, I thought the movie would be about alien black people high-fiving each other. Maybe something akin to Blackula or Black Dynamite. Boy, was I wrong. You can see something is off with expectations like these when you see the cast. None of the actors are high rollers in Hollywood, but you know most of them for their work throughout, as support characters.

Joe Morton is the main character in the movie, along an African American cast that is too long to list here, but I know most of them. John Sayles, the director, is one of the "immigration agents", while the other is David Strathairn. You've got Fisher Stevens and Giancarlo Esposito in small roles. It just goes on and on. Of course, in 1984 they were not known actors, but they proved in time that they are good ones.

The plot is simple, an alien running on Earth from two enforcers, but the script is filled with complexity, tackling in a subtle way things like racism, social status, societal satire. And they are part of the story, while this quiet (Joe Morton doesn't say a word all movie) timid alien is discovering Earth with its good and bad points, starting from Harlem.

Bottom line: highly underrated film, it is low budget, but it has class. I am not surprised it has become a cult classic and I am glad I had the chance to see it. And it's free! You can watch it online royalty free.

This is one of the best and most underrated movies I have ever seen. This is a brilliant black comedy with great social commentary on racism and classism. I loved it the first time I saw it, and it held up when I bought it on DVD. This is definitely worth the time it takes to watch it, and you will find yourself quoting the movie later. The "Beer . . . on the Rocks" quote is my personal favorite, but the card trick is a close second. Have fun with this little known, early John Sayles Masterpiece.

A very intelligent and heartwarming movie. Sure it has it's comical moments but I could hardly laugh because I kept feeling sorry for the mute alien - he had no idea what was happening sometimes but he does learn fast. The movie is funny yet sad at the same time.

Example of what I mean by funny yet sad: He's hungry and grabs a pear to eat, the store clerk gets upset grabs the pear from him and fusses at him, she then waits on a customer, the aliens see that money was handed to the cashier for pears, so the alien ends up opening the cash register to get money to give to the cashier for some pears. Of course she thinks he was stealing and all he tried to do was to give her money for pears. That's funny but it's also very sad to me... he was hungry and but didn't have a clue about money.

During the whole course of the film, my heart kept going out to our mute alien. Sure I got some giggle from the movie but I kept feeling sorry for him - like I wanted to grab him and teach him things from our planet and to protect him. LOL.

This is a good movie with some comical moments, some very sad moments and, I guess you can say, a lesson to teach us about our own society (from immigration to drugs).

7/10