Stargate

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Year:	1994
Country of origin:	USA / France
Director:	Roland Emmerich
Genre:	Egyptological sci-fi chaos
Starring:	Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111282/
Tagline:	It Will Take You A Million Light Years From Home
Favourite line:	"So you think you've solved in fourteen days what they couldn't solve in two years?"

Roland Emmerich's brash, ballsy sci-fi yarn is an enjoyable rollercoaster from start to finish.

James Spader plays Dr. Daniel Jackson, an egyptologist shunned by his peers because of his beliefs: that the pyramids were not in fact built by mankind.
Kurt Russell, in typical brutish, square-jawed monosyllabic mode, more a thug than a hero is Colonel Jack O'Neil, an elite soldier with a troubled past, whose only son was lost in an accident involving his own gun, about which he is still wracked with guilt.
Dr Jackson is drafted in to crack the mystery of a strange artefact discovered in Egypt, a portal to other worlds.
A Stargate, if you will.
Well, he soon deciphers the symbols that encircle the huge device, and it's not long before he and a crack team of soldeirs, headed by O'Neil are off to the far side of the universe.
But O'Neil has a secret mission known only to himself: Investigate the far side and, if trouble is found, destroy the gate on the opposite end. And trouble they do find, in the shape of an alien that has taken on the identity of Ra, the Sun God of Ancient Egypt, who holds the planets inhabitants in his thrall, having outlawed reading and writing, and now works them to death mining a substance to give him eternal life, the very substance that the Stargate itself is made of.
Yadda-yadda-yadda.

Clearly, it's utter nonsense, but it's handled with panache and, with two solid leads in Russell and Spader, there's grit to it too.
Having spawned no fewer than three spin-off series to date, this is clearly one that struck a chord with the sci-fi fraternity, and it's easy to see why.
Good film.