Despite its pedestrian title, UFO is a very good science fiction drama which somehow manages to make mathematics suspenseful by virtue of a literate script, taught direction, and very good, sincere acting on everyone's part.

While not conceived on the grand scale of excellent higher-budget concept-driven productions such as Arrival, Annihilation, Interstellar, Ex Machina, and Predestination, UFO nonetheless joins the ranks of these films in what we can probably at this point call a genuine cycle of intelligent sci-fi, which we've been enjoying 4 the last five years or so.

I normally do not watch UFO films because if you see one the rest are pretty much all the same. Something about this one caught my attention. As soon as it started you could tell it wasn't a big budget movie but it also wasn't one of those cheap documentaries on UFO'S. The movie was well done and it keeps your attention throughout the entire movie. I liked that David Strathairn didn't play a bad guy as he does in a lot of his movies. I also don't usually write reviews but I wanted to let whoever reads this an is considering watching this movie based on reviews that is really worth watching. A good story, and a good cast, who could want more in a movie.

"UFO" is a compelling and especially well-scripted film. The screenwriter has really done his homework for mathematical jargon and principles, and the dialogue is provocative and fast-paced. The characters were well-developed, especially the University of Cincinnati student Mr. Echevaro (Alex Sharp),a nerd who drops his studies and betrays his friends to try to get to the bottom of a mysterious sighting at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

This is a thinking person's film with such concepts as the Fine Support Content (FTC) that lies at the heart of solving the conundrum of when the UFO may make its next return trip. It also is the basis for trying to bump up the IQ of scientists on the earth to learn the secrets of an advanced form of life that is light years ahead of us. This stuff is far beyond the Fibonacci Code developed in Renaissance Italy!

Another scientific reference point in the film is the Carl Sagan-Frank Drake "Arecibo Signal" sent into outer space in 1974. The goal was to transmit the signal to globular star cluster M13 in the hope that extraterrestrial intelligence might receive and decipher it. The only problem was that it could take thousands of years to reach its destination!

There was some wry humor in the film when the brilliant but cynical math professor (Gillian Anderson) likened her student Mr. Echevaro to Thomas Edison, whose overweening ambition may have overseen a gruesome and slow death for a victim in the electric chair in an execution time that took much longer than Edison had predicted. On the other hand, the wise prof realizes that "we are servants rather than masters of mathematics." Her patience pays off when she spontaneously realizes in class that the figure of 21 centimeters may be the key to unlocking the code.

The main character of Mr. Echevaro was an engaging and complex figure, not entirely likeable, but quirky like any genius. It may have been disheartening that his callous behavior led to the arrest of his friend Lee (Warren Beatty's kid) on charges of possession of marijuana and cost his friend Natalie an opportunity to take the GRE practice exam after he broke his promise to her. But the film has a nice payoff when Mr. Echevaro finally meets his nemesis, David Strathairn's authoritarian government appointed scientist and sinister guardian of the extremely limited scientific knowledge possessed by the inhabitants of spaceship Earth.