The Arrival

The Arrival is a 1996 science fiction thriller film written and directed by David Twohy and starring Charlie Sheen, and co-starring Lindsay Crouse, Ron Silver, Teri Polo, and Richard Schiff. Sheen stars as radio astronomer Zane Zaminsky who discovers evidence of intelligent alien life and quickly gets thrown into the middle of a conspiracy that turns his life upside down. Plot Zane Zaminsky, a radio astronomer employed by SETI, detects an extraterrestrial radio signal from Wolf 336, a star located 14 light-years away from Earth. Zane reports his discovery to his supervisor, Phil "Gordi" Gordian, at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). However, Gordi dismisses the findings. Subsequently, Zane is terminated due to alleged budget cuts and blacklisted, which prevents him from working at other telescopes. Zane takes up a job as a television satellite dish installer and secretly creates his own telescope array with the aid of his customers' dishes in the neighborhood. He operates it covertly from his attic with the assistance of his young next-door neighbor, Kiki. After relocating the extraterrestrial radio signal, Zane realizes that it is being drowned out by a terrestrial signal originating from a Mexican radio station. He attempts to seek the help of his former coworker, Calvin, but finds that he has died, supposedly due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Zane travels to Mexico and discovers that the radio station has been destroyed by fire. While exploring the area, he stumbles upon a recently constructed power plant where he meets Ilana Green, a climatologist from NCAR, and helps her safeguard her atmospheric analysis equipment from the plant's aggressive security forces. While being held captive at the plant, Ilana explains that the Earth's temperature has rapidly increased by a few degrees, leading to the melting of polar ice and a shift in the ecosystem. She is investigating the power plant, which seems to be one of several recently built facilities across the developing world that may be responsible for the rise in temperature. The two are released, but Ilana's equipment is confiscated, and Zane notices that one of the guards bears a striking resemblance to Gordi. As Zane and Ilana try to regroup, Gordi dispatches agents disguised as gardeners to release a device in Zane's attic that vacuums up all of his equipment.