Written by Old Bluffer 16th Nov 2007

Mostly Written by Biscuit

Contact stars Jodie Foster as Ellie Arroway, a scientist who has dreamed from a child of making contact with aliens from another planet. As an adult she is a highly talented scientist working on the SETI project at the massive Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. However, her research is cut short when former teacher Dr David Drumlin - a pompous, arrogant man - is promoted to Chief of the National Science Foundation and Science Advisor to the President of the United States [wow, he must need extra large business cards! - OB] and promptly declares her work a waste of time and shuts down the project.

In order to get private funding to continue the research with an independent team Ellie visits a number of potential investors and finds herself presenting to the board of directors at Hadden Industries Inc. By losing her temper in the meeting she manages to impress the reclusive owner billionaire SR Hadden (played by John Hurt) and walks away with a grant.

With this grant the team move to the government owned Very Large Array in New Mexico. Drumlin once again gives notice of his intention to close down operations but just before they cease working Ellie identifies unusual noise signals which turn out to be a message from Vega. National Security gets involved and the project is taken away from Ellie's hands. Drumlin assumes control (suddenly deciding the project was worthwhile after all) and does his best to keep Ellie out of the loop.

Hidden in the message from Vega are tens of thousand of pages of data, which Ellie believes could be an Encyclopaedia Galactica (or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). Hadden however provides Ellie with the means to get back in the game and shows how these pages link together to form blueprints for a machine (albeit ones that make Ikea instructions look simple).

They start to build the machine but due to its size and complexity many nations are involved and therefore all wants their own person to travel in the machine. This of course p*sses off the Americans, who would rather scrap the whole project than have a damned foreigner representing the Earth!

The identity of the pilot will be decided by an International selection committee (heavily bribed by the yanks, no doubt), and both Ellie and Drumlin are put forward. Ellie is rejected by the committee after it is revealed that she is an atheist and Drumlin becomes the successful candidate after answering the questions the way the committee would like and not truthfully (i.e. he plays it like a normal job interview), however Ellie remains a technical advisor on the program.

On the day of the first full scale test of the machine there are many spectators both at the site and world wide. The machine is started and Ellie suddenly recognises one of the staffers standing on the machine's gantry. The face she recognises is that of a religious fanatic who when the world first found out about the message from Vega turned up at the large array to preach to the waiting crowds.

Ellie warns Drumlin via his headset that they have an intruder and as Drumlin and technicians approach him he reveals that beneath his overalls he has a belt of explosives and promptly commits suicide taking with him Drumlin (no sympathy), dozens of technicians, the entire machine and quite possibly a number of the spectators as when the machine is destroyed large pieces of shrapnel fly off spectacularly in all directions.