Don't you get it, the "mine" is possessive!
Talk about a troubled shoot; Enemy Mine was shot in Iceland under the direction of Richard Loncraine, but the studio didn't like it, so they canned him and hired Wolfgang Petersen to shoot the whole damn thing again in Hungary.
Two mortal enemies at war are stranded on a hostile planet, which when all things are considered, could've been more hostile. After all, there's an oxygenated atmosphere, gravity that doesn't squish them to pancakes, and the surface temperature looks pretty balmy. On the downside, it does rain fire, there are big subterranean predators that like to suck you into the soil, and Dennis Quaid is still operating under the illusion that he's playing Han Solo.
Quaid is the human, Davidge; Lou Gossett Jr., under a lot of prosthetics and makeup, is a Drac, who Quaid comes to know as Jerry. Great pains are made to make Quaid look like the bigger barbarian of the two, at least at first (and over the course of the film, unable to shave, he starts looking increasingly like Charles Manson). They, of course, learn to depend upon each other to survive until they're rescued, if they're rescued, if they're rescued by somebody that doesn't sell them into slavery first.
This all might've been pretty routine stuff - and, I guess, most of it is - but there's a pretty cool plot twist about halfway through which I didn't see coming, though I guess there's a bit of a hint earlier on. Other than that, the story is predictable (even when it's ludicrously implausible), and often sentimental; it's nice that there's a sci-fi film here that actually has something to say about a possible future for humanity, but still, it's basically just saying "You don't change, do ya?" and beats you over the head with that about a hundred times. Enemy Mine is based upon a novel by Barry Longyear (never read it), who says that in true Exorcist III fashion, the producers insisted on putting in a subplot involving a mine run by enemies.
There are lots cool, convincing alien planetscapes, something sci-fi movies don't always seem to pull off no matter how big their budgets are. The special effects are all excellent for the time, even though there's a sort of self-conscious cheese about some of them (like the Cylon-like design of the Drac ships, or the even cheesier human fighters).
Gossett lets his body do a lot of his acting for him, remaining convincingly alien even after he's learned English. One does worry that maybe, this was the beginning of the end - I mean, the Iron Eagle - for him, since after this he went on to do...well, nothing much worthwhile. Quaid doesn't fare quite so well; not only does he retain that irritating smugness that made him almost unbearable in the otherwise excellent Dreamscape, but he has the Rick Deckard-ish voiceovers which he delivers in his best Rick Deckard voice, which isn't very good, and for that matter, even Harrison Ford's wasn't that good (but that was kinda the point).
Enemy Mine died horribly at the box-office, unable to pay for its first take, let alone its second. Seems to have its fans today though, and yeah, you could do a lot worse. If you can turn your cynicism off long enough, and do your best to ignore the dopey dialogue, it can be a pretty enjoyable film. Hey, it was when I was twelve.
Watch for Brion James, REALLY chewing some scenery as a cranky slaver. Also watch for the amusing funeral scene late in the film, where bodies are disposed of with the computer-recited words appropriate to their faith (or complete silence, if they're agnostic). I hear that the DVD has available subtitles in the Drac language. That's working way, way too hard to develop something that even the biggest fan is only gonna sit through once.
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