A chilling alien abduction sequence is the only compelling reason to watch this lumbering sci-fi-drama based on an alleged real-life incident. Because director Robert Lieberman and Star Trek: The Next Generation screenwriter Tracy Torme choose to focus most of the film's running time on the companions of a UFO kidnap victim rather than the actual kidnapping itself, the story quickly runs out of steam. While good performances are delivered by Robert Patrick as a stoic leader whose brow is furrowed more deeply than Hamlet's and by James Garner as a cynical state investigator, their characters are not really the point. Leaving the harrowing scenes set inside an alien spacecraft until the film's climactic finale is probably not a bad idea, but most viewers will have mentally checked out long before then. Perhaps it's because the incident that inspires Fire in the Sky is recalled in the same sort of sketchy, halting fashion that most traumas are remembered, but the source material is just too thin and anecdotal to sustain a feature film.