The marketing for Arrival is deceptive, and in this case I am happy to say it. If you’ve only seen the trailer, you’d expect this film to be an action/thriller. We were shown a huge explosion, shots of banks of computer displays and uniformed intelligence officers reminiscent of espionage films, news reports of world looting and Russia assassinating their own scientists, and imposing alien silhouettes. To me, the trailer made this film look like The Day the Earth Stood Still (the newer one, unfortunately) mixed with a few scenes from a Jason Bourne movie.

However, it became clear to me from the start of the film that someone, or some committee, other than the director had made decisions about the publicity for this $50 million dollar title. Denis Villeneuve took great pains to hide the sight of the alien vessels away from the viewer. He built the tension intentionally – concealing television newscasts with a crowd, boxing the camera’s field of view into the window of a helicopter, or obscuring the lens with fog – to reveal the vessel at last in a grand lingering shot of the oblong ship towering majestically over an idyllic valley, dwarfing the the mountains, with morning sunlight to illuminate the scene. Villeneuve paints the ship with mystery and marvel.

Of course, the effect was slightly lost on me, having just seen this ufo on the billboards outside, splattered with a generic tagline like “Why have they come?” or some other nonsense. Instead of majesty, these posters are clearly designed to portray menace, and do it badly.

Thankfully, ignoring the advertising, this film is actually really good. It’s a complex and, unusual for the genre, emotional sci-fi.

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The film centers around the character played by Amy Adams, Dr. Louise Banks, a linguist who is tasked with aiding the U.S. Government’s efforts to communicate with the alien species, but the story is just as much about her relationship with her daughter (not yet conceived during the main story.) Now, when I say “centers,” I mean the camera follows her. It was rare for a shot to be composed without her – either with her in the frame, or from her point of view. Louise was the film. That has to be a difficult task for any actor, and especially as this character, but Adams carries it masterfully.

I do not want to reveal too much of the plot. I will say that the international political aspects are not the main concern but are used to advance the story and drive the tension in the main character. The few moments that the politics went beyond that and tried to moralize – while expected in most classic scifi – felt shallow and out of place here.

It’s certainly not a perfect movie. There is one plot line in particular that seems bolted onto the script (because some catalyst was required) and I found myself thinking “who the #@!* is that guy? Why is he in this meeting?” And coincidentally this plot line involves the only two scenes that I remember in this movie completely outside the perspective of Dr. Louise.

But that said, I enjoyed this film immensely. The emotional drive is compelling, the pacing kept me involved the entire way through, and the payoff of the catalyst was almost enough to make me forgive Villeneuve for breaking the suspension.

I hope that it will do well in theaters, but I’m afraid that the advertising will draw the wrong crowd. If you go into this expecting a sci-fi Bourne, you will certainly be disappointed, but if you go prepared to think and feel, prepared for emotional and cerebral impact, you will, as I, feel compelled to immediately watch it again.