TIME TO REVISE YOUR OPINIONS ON ALIENS : "K-PAX"

Ok, as you can see I have finally got a semi-decent theme going this week. And it’s aliens! Not just the Sigourney Weaver variety but some that are a little more, well… Shall we say understated? I saw the trailer for K-Pax a good many years ago and it really, really seemed interesting but it’s only almost literally ten years later that I got the chance to see it. Oh I do so love using our school library. A word from the wise, if you have some establishment providing you with free books and dvds (a university library for example) make the best of it. It’s definitely what I am doing. Now, K-Pax is not a person / alien but a planet. It is the planet Prot (Kevin Spacey) comes from. He appears one day in Grand Central Station in New York, and his calm explanations that he is, in fact, an alien lands him quite quickly in the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute. Here, the head doctor is Dr. Mark Fuller (Jeff Bridges) and he along with a lot of his eminent colleagues is finding it difficult to understand why this mysterious man’s delusions seem to be so persistent. But there is something else strange about Prot. He has a unexplainable sensitivity to light, seems to know a lot about astro-physics that not only makes perfect sense but baffles leading experts in the field and seems to be having a very bizarre effect on his fellow patients. Dr. Fuller is an eminently sensible man, a man of science but even he begins to seriously wonder… Could Prot possibly, actually come from another planet? Rarely, if ever, have I seen such a film for twists and turns. There were a good few times throughout the film when I was pretty sure I had “got” which way the story was going. Then there was a twist. “Oh” says I and I adapt my approach. Nope. There’s another twist. And not one of those “forced” twists either. The film really, really flows, everything develops really organically. The one thing you probably expect and will ultimately find is the “extraordinary character bursts into the everyday reality and changes the lives of everyone he comes into contact with” line. Yes, there is that. But even that is done with sensitivity and come on, it is a Hollywood film. Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges more than make up for that with their acting alone. The story is, basically, a detective story. We are trying to piece together Prot’s past. Along with Dr. Fuller we are try to find out who Prot really is – and what he is – and like every good detective story nothing is quite what it seems right to the very end. Believe me. Whatever you think this film is at the moment, it probably isn’t. You’re just going to have to give it a whirl and see what I mean for your selves.