The Sender

1998 "When the government hides the truth... all bets are off."
3.8| 1h38m| R| en| More Info
Released: 23 June 1998 Released
Producted By: PM Entertainment Group
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A psychic father and daughter band together with an "angel" in an attempt to save Earth from an extraterrestrial Armageddon. This suspenseful thriller ties together strange occurrences from 1965 in the Bermuda Triangle (where an American fighter pilot supposedly encountered a spaceship) and government hush-up conspiracies.

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Director

Richard Pepin

Production Companies

PM Entertainment Group

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The Sender Audience Reviews

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.
Acensbart Excellent but underrated film
Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Derrick Gibbons An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
NateWatchesCoolMovies The Sender is godawful Z-Grade SciFi with cloying, grating intentions, a script with War Of The World's type ambitions that was given an allowance of like ten bucks to come into fruition, and the result is a windows 98 screensaver with a fraction of a pulse. It's a shame because they scored two dope actors in Michael Madsen and R. Lee Ermey, but as good as they are they're both sheepishly notorious for appearing in bottom feeding diarrhea like this to put food on the table. Madsen strains his tear ducts as the sympathetic father whose adorable daughter has mysterious connections to extraterrestrial activity from years before. He's on the run from all kinds of government folks including Ermey's gonzo, overzealous military asshole, a one dimensional fire and brimstone go-getter who hunts them six ways to Sunday. That's about all you'll get, besides cameos from Dyan Cannon and golden oldie Robert Vaughn, as well as some Fisher Price worthy UFO effects and an all round lack of pride in the craft from everyone involved. Poo.
DigitalRevenantX7 In 1965, US Air Force Captain Jack Grayson & his squadron are flying over the Bermuda Triangle when they encounter a massive alien spaceship. They engage the craft but Grayson is shot down. In the present day, the wreckage of Grayson's plane is found & shipped back home. When his son, Dallas, who is a Naval Commander with duties in Intelligence, tries to visit the wreckage, he is denied entry by Colonel Rosewater, a covert ops soldier. But somehow a pair of UFO nuts steal the truck containing the find & attempt to escape. They are killed by Rosewater & Dallas narrowly saves his father's plane from destruction. Back home, his cancer-stricken daughter Lisa is being visited by a mysterious alien woman who has been treating her illness & training her how to use her genetic ability to teleport objects across vast distances. Dallas is unaware of this but when Rosewater & his goons snatch Lisa & nearly kill him, Dallas is contacted by the woman. Calling herself Angel, she reveals herself to be an alien operative who has watched over the family for generations. Together they attempt to rescue Lisa from the Black Ops team that took her, as well as trying to stop Rosewater & his army of assassins from killing them in the process.Richard Pepin & Joseph Merhi formed PM Entertainment in the early 1990s. First an independent production company with little stature despite Merhi's previous experience as a low-budget action director with films like The Glass Jungle, they had an unexpected success when one of their ultra-cheap action thrillers, CIA: Codename Alexa, became a surprise hit on cable TV when one of its stars, O.J. Simpson, was put on trial in the now legendary murders of his wife & her lover. The film's notoriety, plus the cult success of Pepin's own directorial effort, the Terminator templater CYBER TRACKER, put PM on the map & gave them the ability to turn PM into the major player of the DTV action market in the 1990s.In addition to producing all of their studio's films, Pepin & Merhi took a tag team approach to directing as well. They picked some films & split the workload between themselves, with Merhi directing some action films while Pepin would handle the sci-fi themed ones. Pepin's films in particular would become minor cult classics due to their love of massive shootouts, brutal action sequences & in particular the "Pepin flip" where a vehicle would smash into another vehicle, fly over it & flip over in mid-flight while the impacted vehicle would explode in a massive fireball (The Sender has two of these).As for The Sender, Pepin has been starting to wind down the care that he had given his earlier films & quality has started to slide. The action scenes in The Sender are not as spectacular as previous Pepin films & are not as brutal either. But Pepin has compensated somewhat by adding more dialogue. This would not have been bad if the story was fully fleshed out instead of being haphazardly plotted – there is no sense to the various covert ops teams working on secret projects, UFO sightings, the apparently genetically obtained ability of Michael Madsen's young daughter to teleport objects across vast distances or even the involvement of the ethereal female alien who can shapeshift & also teleport but not as well as her human friend. And almost no mention or even exposition relating the UFO nuts who break into the hangar & steal the plane wreckage (or at least attempt to). The result is a B-grade genre actioner that has some reasonable action scenes & okay effects but a badly-written script & poor plotting. And the sudden return of Madsen's father at the end as a sort of happy ending is kind of stupid.
froberts73 Wow talk about negative reviews. But, a few people enjoyed it. Count me in. I mean, Spielberg, it ain't, but entertaining in its own way, it is.Sure, there are complaints about Porsches outgunning trucks, etc., etc., but maybe the truck was souped up, so there.Car crashes? Every few miles a vehicle was sent flying and/or burning and, for a low budgeter, I found them fairly well done. But, then, I'm used to driving in Norfolk, VA.The acting was - well satisfactory. No one was really bad, no one was up for an Academy Award. An award for corn off the cob should go to the African-American gent with white hair and a constantly growling expression, like a tiger about to pounce. He never pounces, though. He leaves that to the underling tigers.Bottom line. Plenty of action, mixed in with some somewhat sci-fi.
Michael Kelly Love Michael Madsen! Unfortunately, if you take out ALL the chase scenes and ALL the explosions, and ALL the gunfights, the movie last a good 15 minutes. You want action, you get action, you want a story or some sort of recognizable plot look elsewhere. It's a time killer on a rainy Saturday afternoon.