When I'm asked to list my favorite movie, The Thing From Another World is usually the one I mention. It's not always my favorite all the time, but it's always on the short list. It's a great movie, exquisitely paced and offering up a superb image of the ideal American, a no-nonsense man of grit, determination, savvy, and a man willing to collaborate and sacrifice for the greater good. The scientists in the story are a mixed lot, some obsessed by their craft and overcome by intellect as opposed to wisdom, and some striking a better balance. But the soldiers are a gang of good men who have worked together in tough times and who trust one another and who respect the chain of command when it works. There's a practical problem-solving quality to this movie as they and The Thing match wits and strategy at the top of the world with only the winner surviving.
The message of Cold War paranoia is leavened in this one by practical men facing up to the tough requirements a proven enemy demands. They must respond with force and more importantly with wits or they will all be lost. What they think is most important as well as what they feel. It's a battle for the heart as well as the head, for a balance between the two. That's why they win, because they make room for both.
As I said, it's a great movie. They don't make them like that anymore.
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