Aliens and shit?

Dark Angel is a 1990 crime film about a renegade cop who don’t play by the rules looking to avenge the death of his partner. Directed by Craig R. Baxley who directed Left Behind III: World at War. He hasn’t directed anything since about 2011 and has an upcoming film called The Gingerbread Girl. He also directed Stone Cold, and has done a lot of TV movies over the 90s.

Dolph Lundgren plays Detective Caine, a hunky amalgamation of man meat who is every badass lead cop from the 80s. After a bust goes bad resulting in the murder of his partner Ray Turner (Alex Morris), and the mysterious appearance of a weird alien who murders everyone in the bar, Caine is finding himself outmatched and also his boss hates him. Caine is partnered with FBI Agent Smith (yes, Agent Smith. This was 1990) played by Brian Benben to figure out who killed all those people, and why nobody at the Bureau seems to be able to explain how everyone got their throats cut at a perfect angle before being able to draw their guns.

Matthias Hues plays Talec, the bad alien. I know he’s the bad alien because his credit is literally Bad Alien – Talec. Talec goes around pumping people full of heroin and draining fluids from their bodies which makes his repeated line “I cum in peas” fall flat. Unfortunately he also kills Female Mechanic, played by Mimi Cochran who probably propelled the idea of sexy female mechanics in the public conscious by about 20 years, so we hate him. Talec looks a lot like Raiden from the Mortal Kombat movie but he’s not the same guy. Matthias Hues was in 2023’s How About Notflix fan favorite Gunfight at Rio Bravo.

This is a 90s cop movie so of course Caine has a bad relationship with his girl Diane Pallone (Betsy Brantley) who also happens to be a really successful mortician. Pallone is in this movie to anger the audience because it’s made clear that Caine doesn’t exactly pay attention to her well and any red-blooded man or woman in the audience would happily give their left testicle for the chance to sleep in the same apartment building let alone having her pine for their affection. Brantley is that 80s lead kind of sexy, where a woman doesn’t need to wear revealing clothing to be attractive because she’s already damn good looking and has the brains and confidence to turn your legs into jelly.

Talec is being pursued over the film by Azeck, who we know is good because he’s credited as Good Alien. Azeck is played by Jay Bilas who went on a 17 year sabbatical before appearing in his second film Home of the Giants with Haley Joel Osment. He’s fine. Both Azeck and Talec are just dudes with cloudy contact lenses in who bleed milk.

Is Dark Angel on the nose with its content? The guys go to the strip club to meet a dude named Boner (Michael J. Pollard). Dolph Lundgren says “beat it, Boner.” Agent Smith says “that’s why we came here, to pump Boner.” I love this movie. There’s some strippers that get their breasts out for our enjoyment, but they only go to show the dignified beauty in a Betsy Brantley.

Dark Angel has a great cast of supporting characters including Mark Lowenthal as the perpetually cracked out Bruce the Scientist. There’s a lot of great scenes in this film and for the first two thirds it feels like two films mashed into one. On one side you’ve got a buddy cop duo who start out hating each other and gradually form a bond. On the other, you’ve got two aliens who occasionally show up chasing after each other and playing grabass. Imagine if the first half of Terminator was from the perspective of two characters who happened to run into Sarah Connor and the Terminator while having a completely different story of their own, and that’s what this feels like.

It all culminates in the last 20 minutes in a pretty snazzy fight sequence.

Talec is great as the villain, spending most of the film as a relatively emotionless monster and really getting scary toward the end when he starts running around and showing emotion, when you know he’s desperate. The motivation behind the alien is both fitting and hilarious in a believable way. Every planet has drug dealers it turns out. I thought it was funny that Amazon had the three white guys at the beginning credited as “White Boy #1/2/3” until I realized that the gang members were actually called the White Boys. It really is White Boy summer.

Should you watch Dark Angel? Yeah. This film is also known as “I Come In Peace” which is a really stupid name for a film like this but explains the alien’s constant repetition of the line. Dolph Lundgren actually KO’d one of the stunt actors on set with his roundhouse kick. This is pure guilty pleasure that you can enjoy with a nice snack. Whatever happened to Mimi Cochran, anyway?

Rating: B+