Taking it’s cues from one of my favorite movies from back in the day, ‘The Hidden’, we have round house kicking, and Direct to Video hero Marc Dacoscos going toe to toe with Billy Zane, who’s trying to horn in on some of this action by doing some prolific Direct to Video work himself with this movie ‘Alien Agent’.

‘Alien Agent’ certainly gets off to a rousing start as we meet the character of Isis played by the rather comely Amelia Cooke. The last time we saw Miss Cooke she was buck ass naked in ‘Species III’ easily one of the worst movies ever made. However the tall and athletic brunette was quite good in it, just as she was in this film – while managing to keep her clothes on which we obviously made us sad. Anyway, Isis is standing over a freeway overpass, drops in on a truck of soldiers, kills them all and takes their cargo. Oh but not so fast Miss Isis you murdering hussy because an old friend of yours senses your dastardly deeds and is hot in pursuit. Riker (Dacoscos) puts the pedal to the floor of his V8 enhanced Mustang while Isis and her crew of malcontents attempt to throw Riker off their trail. Eventually they drop what looks like miniature nuclear weapon on the man to blow his car up which only slows him down, but does lead to Marc Dacoscos doing what Marc Dacoscos does best and that’s high kicking somebody in the head with the side of his foot.

Here’s the deal. Riker, Isis and their kind come from a world that is dying and they have been space faring looking for an uninhabited world to colonize. Can’t find one, but damn if there isn’t a world not that far away that is identical to theirs in atmosphere and composition, calling itself the Planet Earth. By the way, it’s no idle coincidence that earth is so similar in makeup to these dudes home planet we are told. However in the height of selfishness, the less than honorable members of this planet have no desire to share the planet with its present inhabitants and want them eliminated, but our hero Riker, an intergalactic cop, follows a long standing code that will not allow harm

to come to a sentient race, no matter what the consequences may be for his own species. Things have ramped up a bit as these aliens have brought their Supreme Commander (Zane) to finalize the construction of this rather StarGate looking device they created to beam the inhabitants from their planet to ours. Though the alien menace has numerous Kung Fu enhanced members and a large squad of bloodthirsty human mercenaries on their side, though these humans may want to seriously rethink their loyalties here, Riker has Julie (Emily Lahana), a bratty, precocious, horny teenage girl fresh outta high school. Yep, that should pretty much even things up.

With a title like ‘Alien Agent’ you would think that we have a film that has ‘SCI-FI Channel Original’ written all over it, and though I’m certain one day this film will show up on the worlds most inconsistent television network (BSG on one hand – Mansquito on the other), it is a far superior outing than what we are used to seeing on Saturday at 9 P.M. EST on ‘televisions most dangerous night’. Former stunt coordinator and current film director Jesse Johnson might not have too much subtlety in his directorial arsenal but he does know how to stage a decent fight scene and he does know how to blow stuff up real good. Bullets shoot of guns at rapid fire rates, though they miss their close range targets 99.8 percent of the time, cars flip over and explode on impact, roundhouse kicks land to side of skulls with sickening thuds and necks gets snapped with alarming regularity. Though the narrative isn’t the most original on the planet it does have some interesting points floating around in it as the bad guys aren’t really all THAT bad. I mean sure they want to end all human life as we know it which probably ain’t all that cool, but they only want their own folks to survive, and even the Dacoscos character has some moral ambiguity since he, like all of his kind, has to kill a host to function on this planet. Unfortunately Billy Zane was pretty wasted in this movie as he didn’t really do a whole heckuva lot, but actor Kim Coates, who usually show up in movies playing all kinds of vile vermin was quite funny as the slimy Rain Man-esque engineer helping build the StarGate. Johnson might have also wanted to make even more use of his athletic co-star Amelia Cooke who certainly knows how to move her long slender frame for maximum effect. One thing though as this flick also had the oddest little nude scene wedged in between the mayhem as our spunky high school grad decided that she needed a shower all of the sudden which resulted in a closeup her stand-in showing her wet booty. No, it wasn’t Emma Lahana’s badonk in that scene and lord knows that I’m never one to advise a filmmaker to excise nudity from their movie, but that was just plain unnecessary, especially considering that the girl looked just as dirty, wearing the same dirty ass clothes exiting the shower as she looked entering it.

‘Alien Agent’ really wasn’t all that bad though Director Johnson does pace his film a bit erratically and is obviously far more comfortable filming explosions and people kicking each others asses than directing actors trying act. But hey, go watch ‘The English Patient’ (RIP Anthony Minghella) if you want prose and exposition, and we’ll stay over here with fireballs, neck snapping, and wayward stand-in booty’s and enjoy us some ‘Alien Agent’.