Wrestler Roddy Piper stars as this working class guy who takes a job as a construction worker. One day he finds a pair of sunglases which makes him see the world totally different from how other people see it. Everywhere there are hidden messages telling people to obey, consume, not have any imagination, submit to authority and so on. He also discovers that some people out there are not real people but in fact robots and his discovery leads him to investigate further to what really going on.
This is easily one of my favourite movies by John Carpenter along with In the Mouth of Madness. It's a really cool 80's sci-fi thriller that delivers a thinkable message to the viewers.
It's so entertaining and offers a lot of great things from humorous lines at times, great action scenes, the thinkable fact of how people are being manipulated (even if not exactly as shown in the movie) and offers cool robots too, oh yeah.
It's a political movie but you don't have to have a political interest to see it of course, but the message the movie sends, as said before, is thinkable. It also shows the gap between classes in America and how the poor are exploited by the rich. It's not as serious as it may sound since the movie also has a lot of humour in it which doesn't make it unserious but not as serious as it could've been.
I think this is a good thing and the movie features some funny scenes for instance when Roddy Piper fight with his friend from the construction site and instead of "fighting like normal people", they wrestle and it's a pretty fun sight.
I believe They Live is one of Carpenter's greatest accomplishments - highly entertaining and highly recommended. Roddy Pipe is excellent and if you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and check it out, I'm sure you won't regret it.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1988
DIRECTOR: John Carpenter
WRITING CREDITS: John Carpenter, Ray Nelson
GENRE: Sci-Fi, Thriller, Action, Horror
CAST: Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 93 min
RATING: 9/10
They Live Website/IMDB Click here
They Live Trailer Click here
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